
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 






BATTLE AND A BOY 



BATTLE AND A BOY 


A STORY FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 


BY 

BLANCHE WILLIS HOWARD 

AUTHOR OF 

“TONY THE MAID,” “ONE SUMMER,” “THE OPEN DOOR,” ETC. 

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NEW YORK 

TAIT, SONS & COMPANY 

Union Square 






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Copyright, 1892, 

BY 

UNITED STATES BOOK COMPANY, 


[A it rights reserved.] 


2>eMcateD 


IN FAITHFUL AFFECTION 
TO 

THE BOY, 

AT WHOSE REQUEST AND FOR WHOM 
THIS STORY IS WRITTEN, 

MY NEPHEW, FRIEND, COMRADE, AND MERCIFUL, 
YET MOST UNSWERVINGLY STRAIGHTFORWARD CRITIC, 

HAROLD. 

Stuttgart, 

September , 1892 . 




A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


i. 


The cattle-market occupied the town common. 
The child-market was round the corner in the Bach 
Strasse. Burly peasants in long coats, red waist- 
coats, and high boots, tramped with a weighty air 
from one to the other, and it would be difficult to 
say which was the noisier — where the children’s 
shrill tones were continually raised in eager bar- 
gaining, or where the poor beasts, unable to make 
terms for themselves, yet lifted up their voices in 
loud but futile protest against such indignities as 
thumps in the ribs, having their jaws stretched 
to the verge of dislocation, and their legs pulled 
about in attitudes at variance with the laws of their 
anatomy. 

Down the very middle of the long, rambling 
street, a mere thread of a brook came rushing and 


6 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


leaping impetuously, trying to overflow its rough 
board barriers. It was strong, and swollen with 
spring rains and the melting of ice and snow in 
the mountains, and made as much noise as if it 
thought itself a river. Franzl Reiner, kneeling by 
the swift water, sailed chip-boats — some with masts 
and some without — as diligently as if he had come 
to the Ravensburg child-market for this sole pur- 
pose, and as if his future bread and butter would 
depend exclusively upon his skill in this branch 
of industry. His back turned to the crowd, he 
watched his boats bob and whirl, capsize, disap- 
pear, or go gayly on past the people, and tall high- 
gabled houses, with upper stories projecting each 
over each, and sail out of sight ; but he was proud- 
ly conscious they must in time reach the great 
watch-tower, through whose antique, arched por- 
tals the street ran away from the town and out 
among the fields. In all his eleven years he had 
never seen so many men and women together, so 
many cattle, and heard so many voices as that day 
at Ravensburg. At first he had been bewildered 
by the uproar and strangeness. The animals in- 
deed looked familiar and homelike, and diffused a 
warm, barn-yard smell which he found comforting. 
He felt strongly inclined to remain near an affable 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


7 


cow that manifested a certain placid pleasure in his 
society. But the people and children were push- 
ing on t6 the Bach Strasse, in front of the Golden 
Lamb Inn, and a horse-dealer had sent him along 
with a slap on the shoulder and a rough — 

“ Colts sold here, good-for-nothing boys down 
there ! ” 

The children formed in a compact little army 
until their ranks were broken by people pressing 
in with sharp questions and scrutiny. Franzl 
stood for a while on the outskirts of the crowd, un- 
certain of his course. Feeling shy, he looked sul- 
len and defiant, and scowled at everyone whose 
glance he met, not in the least from ill-will, but 
rather from a vague instinct of self-defence. Nudg- 
ing with a prompt elbow every mortal who by 
chance, or with intention, nudged him, returning 
with liberal measure all the amenities of childhood, 
and the methods by which the unregenerate small 
boy makes the acquaintance of his peer — grimaces, 
motiveless blows, inconsequent efforts to trip up 
and knock down — he listened a while to the others, 
and heard the old hands among the children glibly 
boasting what they could do, and where they had 
been, how they had kept cows and sheep on the 
liill-slopes, how they could scour and run and dig. 


8 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


“ Buy me ! Buy me ! ” they cried, shrilly. But 
it was all rather confusing, and as nobody hap- 
pened to inquire what his special accomplish- 
ments were, or seemed to desire his services, he 
gradually withdrew from the greed and turmoil of 
the market-place, and finally forgot it, devoting 
his energies to the navigation of chips, for it was 
really a splendid brook. 

Meanwhile if Franzl was oblivious of his duty 
to secure a good situation, to “ sell ” himself, as 
they say in Bavensburg — for the child-market has 
its queer idioms as well as Wall Street — the din 
behind the careless little mountaineer proved that 
others were less indifferent to their worldly advan- 
tage. The swarm of boys and girls was of all ages 
and sizes, and though some were pale and sickly, 
for the most part they looked as rosy and clear-eyed 
as if the Pied Piper himself had led them, dancing 
to the tunes of his magic pipe, over the hills and 
far away from their mountain homes in Switz- 
erland and the Tyrol. The truth is they had 
been regaled by nothing so merry and melodious. 
They had patiently trudged many a weary mile to 
the Bavensburg spring-fair. Those of them who 
had had the occasional privilege of dangling their 
heels from the back of some jolting cart had 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


9 


deemed themselves lucky. They had been glad 
of every crust of coarse bread given them on the 
way, had regarded a few cold potatoes as a feast, 
and a swallow of bitter beer as a rare boon. 

Timid little girls of eight or nine were making 
their first ventures in the great world — a somewhat 
immature age, it must be confessed, for gaining an 
independent livelihood and establishing one’s self 
permanently. But nothing makes an experienced 
maid-of-all-work of a baby of nine quicker than 
seven or eight younger brothers and sisters, and 
it is astonishing how motherly and painstaking 
even a boy becomes, when necessity compels from 
him unceasing domestic ministrations. Where 
mouths are many and pence are few, the senior 
infant acquires a goodly amount of routine, and 
when Number Two becomes nearly as expert, 
Number One is sent to trade her experience and 
accomplishments at the child-market. Here the 
smallest human mite is in demand, for perhaps 
some childless woman — inspired by practical, not 
sentimental, motives — has come to hire a little girl, 
or some hardworking young mother wants a child 
to tend the baby while she looks after the farm, 
her husband, and the men. 

Large, bold boys and girls of fourteen or fif- 


10 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


teen who had been there before knew how to 
bandy rough jokes to amuse the bystanders, and 
in the matter of a sharp bargain were a match for 
the wiliest old peasant of them all. A sad-eyed 
mother held her boy’s hand clasped close, lis- 
tened to the boisterous talk, scanned every peas- 
ant’s face, anxiously seeking a kind master, and 
asked herself, after her three days’ pilgrimage, 
whether by dint of still harder work, sewing still 
later at night, she could not manage things better, 
pay off the debts faster, and keep the boy at 
home, at least till next year, when he would be 
stronger and older. A keen-faced big boy stood 
with his arm thrown round his little brother, mak- 
ing brilliant terms for both, but the timid little 
fellow invariably hesitated to ratify the bargain. 
If a boy was quick to seize an advantage and 
ready with his tongue, the children were glad to 
avail themselves of his oratorical talent, and he 
frequently had a large clientele. For the boys 
and girls, while sometimes coming in little herds 
with a man in charge, like sheep with a shepherd, 
were often alone and rarely accompanied by their 
parents. People so poor that they are forced to 
send young children on such an errand have ob- 
viously little time or money to spend on journeys. 


A BATTLE AND A DOT. 


11 


There were, therefore, few partings at the child- 
market. The little ones had shed their tears, or 
gulped them down — according to their size and 
sex — at home. They had left behind all that they 
knew and loved, and being poor, hard-working little 
sonls, had come to cast their lot among strangers, 
to find somebody who had need of their yonng 
strength, who wanted an extra pair of willing feet, 
a cowherd, a shepherd, a goatherd, a goose girl — 
or help in rough work in cottage or field. But 
whatever was the especial purpose for which they 
sold themselves, it was for the hardest possible 
work and the smallest possible pay. As they had 
never seen people who did not have to work, 
and scarcely knew such phenomena existed in this 
busy world, the prospect was in no respect dis- 
heartening, but merely what they expected as a 
matter of course. They cared little for rough 
words, and even a blow now and then was not 
sufficient to destroy all amicable relations with the 
owner of the fist. The most rose-colored hope 
which each child privately entertained was that 
he should get more to eat in his new quarters than 
he had ever had at home. 

Peasants from all the fertile shores of the Lake 
of Constance, from Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Baden, 


12 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


Austria, and Switzerland, strode about, each speak- 
ing the dialect of his region, many wearing the old 
costumes, which, although going rapidly out of 
date, are still worn on Sunday and special occasions. 
They came to buy, to sell, to see acquaintances, 
and what was going on. Some sought a good 
horse, some a cow, others a sturdy boy or girl. It 
was easy to detect a rich farmer, for he was apt to 
take himself and life with becoming gravity. 
There was always a dense crowd by the horses, 
another round the children, and everywhere was 
a continual commotion, a neighing, a lowing, a 
bleating — scolding, quarrelling, and laughter — 
tramping in and out of the inns, where every bar- 
gain was concluded by a mug of beer ; above all, 
the shrill treble of the children, “ Buy me ! Buy 
me ! ” 

Franzl knew that the brook was born in the 
mountains as much as he himself. Only a moun- 
tain brook could spin along like that. Theirs 
on the hill behind the cottage went faster still, 
and clearer, and foamy over the rocks. Yet 
for a mountain brook that had somehow got 
caught between boards in the middle of a town 
street, this was a fine fellow, travelling on 
quite unconcerned, with a brave and merry spirit 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


13 


of its own. All of which Franzl felt in a vague, 
general way, and with a sense of approval and 
companionship. He shaped his masts carefully, 
and was no more anxious about his future than a 
frisky colt round the corner. 

A red-haired boy strolled near and watched 
him. Franzl scowled and rose. The other boy 
was not dressed precisely like the boys of Franzl’s 
native valley and was a stranger — reasons enough, 
as all the world knows, for mistrusting and dislik- 
ing a person at first sight. A mast would not 
stand. The boy at Franzl’s elbow snickered, 
whereupon he punched the tempting red head to 
get it out of the way, and the owner returned the 
blow with the quickness of thought. After which 
silent interchange of courtesies, that made them 
feel better acquainted and more friendly, Franzl 
continued to make boats and the other to watch 
with benevolent interest. 

“ Pauli, Pauli,” called a woman, coming rapidly 
toward them. She wore a red plaid shawl drawn 
over her head and pinned under her chin, and in 
addition a man’s hat ; but small eccentricities of 
toilette were too frequent to be conspicuous at the 
Ravensburg market. The children glanced up as 
she approached. 


14 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


“ How can you be idling there, Pauli, when you 
haven’t sold yourself yet ? There’s a fat Allgauer 
dairyman who wants to look at you. Josef is al- 
ready in the Lamb with his Baden peasant. Ach, 
it is far from us — Baden ! And little Vroni — the 
woman says she’ll be easy with her, but dear, dear, 
who knows? I don’t fear for you, Pauli. You are 
slow and steady like me, and willing to keep at 
your work whether things are rough or smooth. 
But Josef takes after your father, being sometimes 
sulky-tempered. If they drive him, he won’t work 
well, while if they’ll coax a bit, he’ll slave his fin- 
gers to the bone for them, but how will they know 
that, the strangers? And my little Vroni, that’s 
the worst ! Twenty marks is all they’ll give — but 
if they are easy with the child — well, well ! Come, 
Pauli ! ” 

Franzl dropped his boat and looked gravely after 
them. He was rather sorry to have Pauli go. 

The woman was very poor, and had not yet sold 
her Pauli. Why should she bother about other 
folks’ boys, she thought. But her good heart 
made her turn again, and say : 

“ Are you sold ? ” 

“ No.” 

“ Do you want a place ? ” 


A BATTLE AND A DOT. 


15 


“ Yes.” 

“ Are yon here alone ? Nobody to look after 
yon?” 

“ I’m taking caro of myself,” said Franzl, with 
dignity. 

“ I should think you were ! All Saints give us 
patience ! ” she exclaimed. “ These boys ! There 
you stand and cut chips like a duke, while the 
best places are taken behind your back. What 
will your poor mother say to that ? ” 

Franzl did not reply. He dug his heel hard 
into the ground, swallowed a big choking lump 
that he now and then felt in his throat, and 
tried to squeeze away a hot sensation behind his 
eyes. 

Pauli’s mother cast an anxious glance at the 
crowd, caught the eye of her fat dairyman, pointed 
at Pauli, gesticulated frantically, giving her patron 
to understand that she was coming in a moment, 
was somewhat, but not wholly, reassured by his 
nod, then turned with impatience to the senseless 
child taking her time and attention at so critical a 
moment. 

“ Where’s your mother? ” she demanded, harshly. 

“Dead,” muttered Franzl, his voice queer on 
account of the lump. 


16 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


“ Where’s your father? ” she asked, gently. 

“ Dead.” 

“ What ? Both of them ? Oh ! oh ! ” 

“ He died first. He was hunting chamois with 
the strangers. He never came back. Nobody ever 
found him. He’s down a cliff somewhere.” 

“Well, well — that is bad luck! This is a 
world ! And your mother? ” 

“ She was always missing him. Then she got 
worse. Then she died,” said the child, unsteadily, 
digging his heel deeper into the earth. 

“Lately?” 

“ Last week.” 

“ And you’ve no family at all ? ” 

“ Yes, I have, too. I’ve got some family,” he 
retoned, with a flash of resentment and a surpris- 
ing change of demeanor ; but he did not communi- 
cate the fact that his entire family consisted of a 
queer little flannel bundle, with a face that puckered 
and ten pink toes. 

“ Well, well,” she returned, with a benevolent, 
but somewhat vague, attempt at consolation, “ it 
will be all right sometime,” though what was going 
to be right she did not intimate, “and I’m glad 
you’ve got a family, after all.” 

“ I have,” Franzl declared, stoutly, and smiled for 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 17 

the first time, a bright warm smile, which Pauli’s 
mother liked. 

<£ You come along with me,” she said, briskly. 
“ Your poor mother never wanted you to be daw- 
dling here, and I am sure if I was dead I’d be 
much obliged to anybody who would look sharp 
after my Pauli when he needed it.” 

Without more ado she grasped his hand and 
moved toward the market, a boy on either side. 
Franzl went willingly enough, cheered by her pro- 
tection and control. 

“Now, Pauli, there’s your fat dairyman. Pun 
along and tell him what you did last year, and that 
you’ll suit him. Speak up ! Don’t be bashful. 
I’ll be there as soon as I find little Yroni. She’ll 
be lonesome without me. But there, how like an 
old fool I talk ! She’ll have to get used to being 
lonesome. And twenty marks isn’t much. Holy 
Saint Josef, this is a world ! Here I am selling 
three children, and a strange boy, too, without any 
father or mother. What’s your name ? ” 

“Franzl Reiner.” 

“ Now, Franzl, you be a good boy and sell your- 
self as fast as ever you can. I’ll be along as soon 
as I find Yroni. In a crowd like this you could 
lose your own soul and never know it. And I 


18 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


must speak a word to Josef. He’s a good child, 
but sometimes he’s sulky. He takes after his 
father. Franzl, in the first place, listen a bit. If 
you had listened instead of playing you would have 
sold yourself long ago, for you are a fine, strong 
boy, Franzl. Hear what the others say. Good 
Lord, some of those children would sell themselves 
to the Kaiser before he knew it, and talk him stone 
deaf, to boot. Their tongues go like mill-wheels.” 

Franzl, although not critical, thought that her 
own tongue was not stiff. 

She had elbowed their way well into the noisy 
throng. 

“ Now you stand here in the middle, and listen 
with all your ears, and find out what’s going on — 
and look as big as you can, and if anybody wants 
to buy, you talk away as bold as a lion — but don’t 
promise anything till I come back. I’ll be along 
as soon as I’ve looked after Pauli and Josef and 
Yroni.” 

On she went with her intrepid elbows, and 
presently he lost sight of the red shawl pyramid, 
crowned by the man’s hat. 

Thus admonished, instructed, and initiated by 
his new friend, transplanted from the byways of 
sloth to this great centre of speculation and busi- 


A BATTLE AND A BOT, 


19 


ness, Franzl, who was by no means dull or lazy, 
felt excited and interested, eager to begin opera- 
tions, and determined to do well for himself. The 
touch of human sympathy had melted his defiance 
and loneliness. No longer scowling and suspicious, 
he stood alert and sunny, calling, “ Buy me ! Buy 
me ! ” with his fresh young voice, and awaiting his 
fate. 


II. 


Franzl’s fate presently stalked up to liim in the 
shape of a Suabian peasant, who scrutinized him 
as narrowly as if he were a horse. The solemn 
ruminating gaze wandered slowly over his small 
person, and inspected his loose waistcoat, broad 
leathern belt, short, tight trousers, the stockings, 
that began too late and ended too soon — for they 
did not approach the bare, brown knees or the 
ankles — the heavy shoes, with nails in the soles, 
the curly brown hair, and the pretty, green, pointed 
Tyrolean hat, beneath which the spirited face looked 
up curiously. His clothes were old, faded, patched, 
and shabby ; but they were the Sunday suit his 
mother had made for him long ago, and constituted 
his entire wardrobe. Some of the children laid on 
the ground before them small bundles containing 
all their worldly possessions. Franzl’s march had 
been impeded by no such weight. 

“ Tyrolean — hm ? ” said the man. 

The portentous “ hm ” puzzled Franzl. It 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


21 


sounded disparaging, and lie did not yet know 
enough of trade to understand that stupid people 
think it sharp to underrate the value of the wares 
they wish to buy. 

“ From the Yenter Thai,” he replied. 

“ lira — hm — ” repeated the peasant. 

“ It’s a splendid valley,” Franzl returned, 
haughtily, offended that anybody should “ hm ” at 
his home ; “ it’s got snow mountains, high ones, 
the highest in the world — and rocks, big ones, the 
biggest in the world — and chamois, more chamois 
than there are anywhere else in the world.” 

The man, as taciturn as Pauli’s mother was lo- 
quacious, stared, but otherwise paid no attention 
to these boasts. Puffing slowly at a long, brown, 
curving pipe, he measured the boy from head to 
foot. 

“ Ever been out to work ? ” he finally asked. 

“ No.” 

“ What can you do ? ” 

“ Anything any other fellow of my size can, I 
suppose.” 

The peasant pinched the child’s arm, gave his 
shapely legs a few investigating slaps, looked well 
at the multitude of youngsters to satisfy himself 
anew that there was no healthier boy on the 


22 


A BATTLE AND A DOT. 


ground, and again uttered Ids enigmatic ' “ hm.” 
Franzl did not mind it now. He concluded it was 
part of the business. 

“ Can you engage for a year ? ” 

Poor homeless Franzl might have replied that 
he could engage himself for a dozen years, since 
there was nobody to miss him, but he merely 
said : 

“ Don’t mind.” 

“ Family?” 

“ Yes,” said Franzl, cheerfully, “ I’ve got some.” 

“ Hm, they’ll let you alone will they ? They 
won’t be coming after you ? ” 

“ No danger,” returned the boy, reflecting that it 
would be long indeed before those ten pink toes 
would be coming after him. 

A circle had formed round them, for the peasant 
was known as a man of means and importance, and 
a good judge of cattle. He had inspected several 
boys that morning without finding an article to his 
taste. He was so slow he gave one the impression 
that he expected to live a thousand years at least, 
and was paid by the hour for deliberating. While 
he stared and pondered, Franzl counted the silver 
buttons which in long dazzling rows adorned the 
farmer’s portly person. 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


23 


“ I’ll give you thirty marks,” he proposed. 

Franzl felt disappointed and mortified. Why, 
the woman’s little Yroni would earn twenty — a girl 
— and he a big boy of eleven, as big and strong as 
some fellows of thirteen. Confused and depressed, 
he looked at the bystanders, who, however, showed 
no surprise at this unflattering estimate of his 
powers, and indifferently waited for his answer. 

Suddenly, a little distance behind the peasant, 
Pauli’s red head and friendly freckled countenance 
bobbed into view, and nodded infinite encourage- 
ment. With frantic gestures, grins, and disre- 
spectful grimaces at the peasant’s broad back, 
Pauli swung his arms like windmills, and silently 
cheered Franzl on to victory. 

The pantomime might have been unintelligible 
to the wise and prudent, but it was not to Franzl, 
to whom it said : “ Go on, old fellow ! You’re all 
right. He’s a fraud. We’ll- manage him.” 

Support and sympathy from an old and intimate 
friend — for so Pauli seemed at this crisis — did 
Franzl’s heart good and set his wits working. 

“Why, they always begin low down,” he re- 
membered. “ That’s what I’ve been hearing all 
the morning. What a fool I was to forget ! ” 

It struck him that it would take less time and 


24 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


trouble if people would say at once how much they 
would pay, instead of beating about the bush so 
long. He did not quite know what he was worth — 
a nice question, indeed, for anyone at any time to 
decide for himself ; more than Vroni he was sure, 
but less than Pauli, who, haying been bound out 
before, belonged to the aristocrats of the market 
and could put on airs toward novices. Franzl 
was on the point of declaring he would not take a 
penny less than fifty marks, when he saw Pauli 
hold up eight fingers, and make hideous contor- 
tions with his mouth. 

Franzl understood and was much excited. 

“ He means eighty marks. But that’s what the 
very biggest fellows have.” Bits of talk and hag- 
gling which he had heard with indifference now 
recurred to him. “ Oh, yes, he must come up and 
I must come down. It’s a kind of hide-and-seek. 
He hides, then I hide.” 

A merry -looking girl of fifteen or sixteen had 
joined Pauli, also another boy. All three tele- 
graphed by private wire to Franzl that he must say 
“ eighty,” and eighty he said, boldly ; but he felt 
queer f somewhat as he had once felt when he was a 
very little boy and his father had told him to jump 
from a rock into a green, deep lake. He thought 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


25 


it was plain enough how he would get into the 
water, but how it would be down there, and how 
he would ever come up again — that was what he 
didn’t grasp. This, too, was a leap into the un- 
known ; still he said “ eighty,” in response to his 
privy counsellors. 

“ Thirty-five,” the peasant offered, stolidly. 

“Here we come,” Franzl thought, “one toward 
the other, like two donkeys crossing a bridge.” 
But he was in good spirits now, and roused to do 
his best. 

With his hands behind him, and making himself 
as tall and manly as possible to increase his market 
value, he exclaimed : 

“ Thirty-five marks for a big boy like me ! You 
must be joking. You mean seventy-five.” 

The council of three grinned approval. Pauli 
waved his windmill arms. 

Observing Franzl’s bright face looking often in 
one direction, the peasant turned to discover the 
attraction ; but as his rotund figure revolved slowly 
upon its axis, he saw nothing but people moving 
about, intent on their own affairs, and three most 
innocent figures, with heads thrown back and eyes 
fixed upon the ancient tower, like connoisseurs 
lost in contemplation of its architectural charms. 


26 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


“Forty,” he said, “and it’s more than you are 
worth. Forty marks is a good deal of money 
nowadays,” he remarked solemnly, and looked at 
the bystanders. His assertion met with sympa- 
thy. 

“That’s true,” somebody responded. “Forty 
marks is a good deal of money. It doesn’t grow 
on every bush.” 

“ Say seventy, and I’ll begin to listen,” returned 
Franzl ; but it was difficult for him to command 
his lordly tone, for forty marks seemed a fortune 
to him. 

“ Forty,” reiterated the peasant. “ Forty is my 
price.” 

Franzl hesitated. Over the private wire again 
came sound advice from experienced heads : 

“ Say sixty, then come down to fifty, and hang 
on for your life.” 

Franzl obeyed the instructions conveyed by the 
animated, expressive, and trustworthy “ code.” 

“ Sixty,” he called, boldly. 

The peasant puffed some time, regarding Franzl’s 
lithe, strong legs. It was those legs he wished to 
employ. They were the best ones on the market 
that day. Since they could run they had been 
trained in the mountains to climb and spring, 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


27 


sure-footed as a goat, while above them were an 
unusually deep, broad chest for a growing boy, 
and perfect lungs. 

“ He is worth a hundred marks and more to 
me,” reflected the peasant ; “ I’ll give him fifty ; ” 
for he would not have enjoyed a golden crown in 
paradise unless he could feel that he had bought 
it for half price. 

Meanwhile the allied juvenile forces and the 
enemy had arrived at the same conclusion. 
They were all determined upon fifty marks — 
the three children, because they had their spe- 
cial tariff, and fifty marks was the highest price 
which a new boy under fourteen could obtain ; 
Franzl, because they had inspired him with con- 
fidence, and it is always pleasant .to have one’s 
value set at a high figure ; the peasant, because 
such a boy was dirt-cheap on such terms. Never- 
theless the peasant proposed forty-two, and Franzl 
came down slowly to fifty-eight, and there they re- 
mained balancing some time before they would 
deign to make further concessions. Finally, after 
a great deal of unnecessary shilly-shallying, they 
arrived, by reluctant degrees at fifty, which made 
all parties secretly triumphant, particularly the 
conspiracy of labor against capital. 


28 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


Franzl, who felt far richer than a Rothschild, still 
thought it, all in all, a silly performance, for he was 
only an ignorant little mountaineer, and hadn’t a 
suspicion that this sort of thing was not peculiar 
to the Rayenshurg market, but that roundabout 
ways were in high favor all over the world, and 
that statesmen, diplomates, lawyers, doctors, all 
sorts of wise old graybeards, frequently scorn to 
accomplish their objects with simplicity and direct- 
ness, when they can possibly spin out preliminaries 
and waste time in not saying what they mean. 

If Franzl had been uncertain as to the delicate 
matter of self-valuation, he was quite at his ease 
with respect of certain practical privileges which 
it was now his task to secure from his new master, 
and scarcely needed Pauli’s lively suggestions from 
the background. 

“ You’ll give me two suits of clothes ” — what he 
really said was double clothes — “ a Sunday suit and 
a workday one ? ” 

The peasant demurred and wrapped himself in 
smoke and silence to ostensibly consider the ques- 
tion, but this again was merely his idea of manners 
and dignity, for every child, according to old cus- 
tom which nobody ever thought of evading, could 
claim two suits. 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


29 


“ Yes, two,” he agreed, at length. 

“ Whole suits,” persisted Franzl ; “ jacket and 
trousers and waistcoat ? ” 

After another season of profound meditation the 
peasant responded : 

“Whole suits.” 

“ And two pairs of shoes ? ” 

The peasant puffed a while, stolid, inscrutable, 
and as important as if the fate of the Triple Alli- 
ance depended upon his answ r er. 

“ Two pairs of shoes,” he repeated. 

“ Shoes made out of shoe-leather ? ” Franzl stip- 
ulated, gravely. 

The peasant nodded assent, and the bystanders 
laughed, but Franzl was quite serious. He had seen 
shoes made of wood, of felt, of carpet, even of an old 
coat, and he intended his should be out-and-out 
shoe-leather shoes, and no mean woolly imitations. 

“ And school in the winter, Franzl — three 
months’ school,” prompted Pauli’s mother, who had 
listened to the closing conditions. Neither party 
to the sale was as grateful as he ought to have been 
for this judicious suggestion ; the farmer because 
he did not want to lose so much of the boy’s time, 
and Franzl for reasons which need not be dwelt 
upon, since they are evident to every eleven-year- 


30 


A BATTLE AND A DOT. 


old boy, unless lie be a little John Stuart Mill, who 
at the age of three preferred Greek to taffy. 

Fianzl did not look elated, and something in his 
eyes expressed the wicked intention of shirking 
school if he could ; but Pauli’s mother came for- 
ward valiantly, leading little Yroni. 

“ Now you must let him go to school, you know. 
Boys must have their schooling. My Pauli and 
my Josef will have their three months’ school. 
Speak up Franzl, and say you want to go to school. 
Fifty marks is good, and the clothes and shoes, 
and everything is all right except the school. I’ve 
walked three days from beyond Bregenz,” she con- 
fided to the peasant’s immovable countenance, “and 
I’ve sold three children this morning, and I ought 
to start for home again, for my man’s got a broken 
leg — broken in two places. I suppose he couldn’t 
help breaking it just at this busy time, with the 
spring coming on, but it does seem as if men 
made all the trouble they could. I’ve got five chil- 
dren younger than Yroni here. This is a world ! 
That’s why I have to sell some of them. I don’t 
fear for Pauli. He’s steady as a mill, like me. 
But Josef takes after his father, being a bit sulky 
in the temper, and strangers won’t know how to 
humor him ; and little Yroni — well, well, they say 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


31 


they’ll be easy with the child — it’s only twenty 
marks she gets ! If you have eight children, you 
know, and a man with a broken leg — broken in 
two places — spring’s an inconvenient season for 
broken legs. Well, well ! But it’s as much of a 
pull letting them go off among strangers as if you 
had only one. Nobody knows what they will find 
off there. It’s as bad as getting married — which 
is mostly pretty uncertain. I ought to be off. It’s 
no use waiting, now they are all sold. You will let 
Franzl go to school, won’t you ? It’s his right, you 
know.” 

She might as well have addressed herself to the 
town-pump so far as sympathy and response were 
concerned. But happily all that she required was 
a listener. The sympathy and response she her- 
self could provide. Undaunted by the peasant’s 
apathy, she went on energetically : 

“ I’m looking a bit after Franzl. I told him I’d 
see that things were all right. He’s got a family, 
but they couldn’t come with him. They want him 
to go to school. It isn’t respectable not to get 
an education when you’re young and not good 
for much else. Speak up, Franzl. Say you want 
three months’ school. Tell him your mother 
wouldn’t want you to miss your schooling.” 


32 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


Franzl flushed, and without more delay mut- 
tered, ungraciously : 

“Well — school then,” and the peasant grudg- 
ingly agreed. 

The bargain was now completed. Franzl Reiner 
was bought and sold, and duly registered. He 
submitted his papers, which the peasant examined 
with his phenomenal slowness, then fished from 
the depths of a leather purse, as long as a stocking, 
a five-mark piece, which he gave the boy in proof 
of good faith. It was a large, heavy coin. Franzl 
longed to examine it, but the older boys were 
watching him, and pride led him to drop it care- 
lessly into his pocket. 

Little Yroni, however, was more guileless, and 
worked to unclasp her mother’s fingers, which 
held a similar but smaller coin. 

“ There, little one,” she murmured in her lov- 
ing and pretty dialect ; “ thou seest it, my child. 
It is thine. Mother will put it away that it may 
not be lost. And here is thy woman coming for 
thee. It is time to go. Be good, Yroni. Mother 
will come for thee some day. Run along, child.” 

She gave the little girl a slap on the shoulder, 
did not kiss her — peasants have not much time to 
kiss their children — did not shed a tear as Yroni, 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


33 


somewhat dazed by her vast experiences that day, 
and led by the strange woman, walked out of the 
crowd and turned the corner of the street without 
once looking back. The mother watched, dry-eyed, 
until the small figure was out of sight, then dropped 
upon a bench in front of the Lamb, flung her apron 
over her face, buried her head in her hands, rocked 
to and fro, and sobbed and mourned for her chil- 
dren. But tears were a luxury which she could 
not afford long at a time. 

“ Lord ! this is a world ! ” she muttered. 

As she looked up with her wet red eyes, Pauli 
stood near — troubled and awkward — and Franzl 
hesitated at the door of the inn. 

“ Oh, you boys,” she exclaimed, with a strange 
outbreak of irritation, “mind that you behave 
yourselves, mind that you are steady and decent, 
and grow into something worth having. Men -folks 
do an awful lot of harm — and women-folks have the 
worst of it — mostly. But there — what do you 
know about it ? Off with you, Pauli ! Josef’s gone 
— Yroni’s gone.” She stood, smoothed her apron, 
rubbed the back of her hand roughly across her 
eyes, and prepared to start on her homeward 
journey. “ Behave yourself, Franzl. Good-by, 
Pauli. There is nothing more for me to do 


34 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


here, and there’s enough work waiting somewhere 
else.” 

She turned from him, suddenly looked back, a 
world of tenderness in her rugged face : 

“ You’ve been a good, steady boy, Pauli. You 
have always worked better than any other boy.” 

She strode away with the step of a man, and the 
queer man’s hat on her head — in her heart, heavy 
sorrow — the kind, womanly, pitiful heart that, in 
spite of its own burdens, could care for the inter- 
ests of a lonely little boy by the wayside. 

In the Lamb, packed close together on benches 
at long, bare tables, sat the peasants and the chil- 
dren who had sold themselves. It was their in- 
alienable right to eat heartily of soup and meat, 
with beer, as the final ceremony of the market, and 
the one which they regarded as entirely satisfac- 
tory. 

Neither Pauli nor Pranzl had had a morsel that 
day, and when they found themselves and their 
respective proprietors sitting before bowls of 
steaming hot soup, they fell to in silence and with 
ravenous appetites. The din of voices, the air 
dense with the smoke of a score of strong pipes 
and beer fumes could not destroy their zest. 
Pauli loved his mother honestly, and choked and 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


35 


felt queer when she left him ; but he was only thir- 
teen. He could not comprehend her grief or her 
love ; he had never before in all his life had so 
much soup at once, and this felicity absorbed his 
being. 

When, after a while, the two men moved to a 
table where great cattle-potentates were discuss- 
ing prices and pounding with their fists, Pauli re- 
marked with a chuckle : 

“ Well, we nosed him about ! ” 

“ Lucky for me ! ” returned Franzl. 

“Oh, I didn’t mind doing you a good turn,” 
Pauli rejoined, with frank indifference. “ The 
mother wouldn’t leave you alone. But what I 
wanted most was to pay him off. He offered me 
forty marks this morning, and said that was all I 
was w r orth. He pretended there was something 
the matter wdth my knees. I’m an old boy, and a 
sixty-mark boy, and when I saw him put his eye 
on you I made up my mind I’d make the price, 
and he shouldn’t have you for less than fifty. 
That other fellow was angry with him, too, for 
some such trick. He and his sister and I, we sold 
you well. Knees indeed! Old Skinflint had to 
pay fifty. He’s rich as a king — ten or twelve cows 
and no end of vineyards.” 


36 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


Pranzl’s eyes opened wide at such visions of 
affluence, but he took exception to Pauli’s tone, 
and remarked, loftily : 

u 0h, I could have sold myself alone. I was 
getting on all right.” 

“We’d better eat all we can stuff,” observed the 
practical Pauli, in no respect moved by Pranzl’s 
ingratitude. 

Whereupon the boys relapsed into silence and 
devoured everything that was set before them. 

That night Pranzl, wedged between his master 
and another heavily built man, had his first ride 
on the railway. The carriage was crowded with 
peasants smoking their pipes and talking of the 
market, prices, cattle, vineyards, and crops. Pranzl 
was wildly excited by the movement, and although 
it was an accommodation-train of surpassing slow- 
ness, he held his breath with delight, and fancied 
himself flying. He must tell his mother about it, 
he resolved — the thump-thump, the other motion, 
and the rushing through the air. She would never 
believe it. She would say : 

“Pranzl, thou art a little boy, but a great 
rogue.” 

Ah, there was the lump in his throat again. He 
was always forgetting there wasn’t any mother any 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


37 


more. He couldn’t run home and tell her any- 
thing. She would never smile at him again, never 
speak again. 

The lump grew very big. In the smoky, dim 
light, no one noticed the homesick, heartsick, tired 
little boy, squeezed between two broad peasants, 
the tears rolling down his face. 

He wept till he fell asleep, and dreamed a happy 
dream of the swift mountain-brook foaming down 
the rocks behind the cottage. 


III. 

The young Alexander was doubtless far less 
proud of his snorting Bucephalus than Franzl of 
his clumsy, rattling, bright-green milk-cart. It is 
true that nothing better than a horse has ever been 
invented for a boy’s delight, and even if Alexan- 
der had no printing-press, no bicycle, and no de- 
tective-camera, he possessed, in his historic nag, 
the best thing a boy could then, or can now, call 
his own. Still he had had other horses, as well as 
everything provided in those days for the enter- 
tainment of Macedonian youth and kings’ sons — 
and if there was anything else in the world which 
he thought worth having, we read that he helped 
himself to it later without shyness — whereas Franzl 
had never owned much of anything. If he played 
with a toy, it had been of his own construc- 
tion, and neither he nor any boy of his acquaint- 
ance had ever had a story-book. The only books 
they knew were school-books, for which they en- 
tertained a healthy aversion. 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


39 


When he found himself in command of his milk- 
cart it was a great moment in his existence. Al- 
though in point of fact he owned neither cart nor 
milk, his sense of proprietorship was mighty as 
he realized he was to be sole propeller of all this 
magnificence. That it was over-heavy for a little 
boy, that the way was long and up and down steep 
hills, that in storm and wind, heat and cold, he 
would have this load to push or drag after him, did 
not enter his thoughts, for neither weather nor 
work could frighten him. He was proud, glad, 
eager, and ambitious. It was a distinct advance in 
life besides being unexpected. He thought the 
green wagon with the nine shining four-gallon 
milk-cans, standing straight as a regiment, and two 
measuring-cans packed crosswise in front, a beau- 
tiful and imposing sight. The pole was nearly 
twice as long as the little cart, and very broad and 
strong, but its uses were manifold and its possi- 
bilities more than appeared at the first glance. As 
it might be attached to a horse, an ox, a donkey, a 
cow, a dog, a man or woman, a girl or boy, it was 
made big and adjustable to suit all their needs, 
and none of them ever found fault with it for 
being out of proportion. 

Leni walked beside him, her grave eyes look- 


40 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


ing straight before her, her dark hair brushed 
smoothly back and hanging nearly to her knees 
in one long, heavy braid. She apparently paid no 
attention to the boy, and as they had nothing to 
say to each other, and were simple folk, they 
marched on in silence, whereas when fashionable 
people have nothing to say, they chatter as fast as 
possible, and which is the more sensible method is 
entirely a matter of opinion, but it is possible Soc- 
rates might have disagreed with Mrs. Grundy on 
this and many another point of social etiquette. 

Leni and Franzl, however, never having heard 
of either of these worthies, simply obeyed their 
own instinct, the young girl serious, absorbed in 
thought, the boy enchanted with the noise his cart 
was making, eying it keenly, studying its weight 
and properties, and the best way to draw it ; for 
there was a cross-piece on the end of the pole, be- 
side various dangling straps, which Franzl was 
trying one after another as fast as possible. 

Christian Lutz’s large farm lay at some distance 
beyond the village of Waldheim. After passing 
the village the road ran between thrifty apple- 
orchards, was level, and so hard and good that the 
cart almost went of itself and gave little trouble. 
But when they had walked at a brisk pace for a 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


41 


half-hour or more, they came to a long, steep hill. 
Here for the first time Leni seemed conscious of 
her companion’s presence, not that she deigned to 
speak, but she watched him and his efforts to mas- 
ter the situation. 

It was astonishing how heavy and unwieldy the 
docile cart suddenly became. Franzl pulled and 
tugged bravely, glanced back questioningly as if he 
suspected some unseen boy of loading on extra 
weight, but the cart did not grow lighter, the hill 
stretched on before him, and putting a stone be- 
hind a wheel, he stopped an instant, panting and 
wiping the moisture from his forehead with his 
sleeve. Leni looked calmly at him as if his strug- 
gles did not concern her. Franzl wished he had 
not stopped. He would never stop after he was 
used to it. He wondered what that big cross-piece 
was for. Perhaps to push. He turned the cart 
and began to back it up the hill. Although it was 
still hard enough work, he could use all his weight 
and so get a purchase and manage the thing very 
well without losing more time. 

“ Eight,” said Leni ; this one word, no more and 
no less, and went on with her unconcerned air. 

They reached the brow of the hill and began the 
long downward slope. Presently Franzl found 


42 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


himself and his cart careering along as wildly as if 
a separate demon sat enthroned in every milk-can 
and inspired the mad flight. The cart seemed 
alive, and Franzl, a mere helpless appendage, 
dragged along in its train. But his was not a spir- 
it that would easily acknowledge itself beaten, and 
by a milk-cart, too ! With a strong effort he ran it 
to the side of the road, and at the risk of overturn- 
ing it, succeeded in getting the side-wheels into a 
ditch. This manoeuvre effectually controlled its 
friskiness, and the little boy paused to take breath 
and counsel with the inner Franzl. He was amazed 
to discover what eccentricities of conduct, what 
headstrong speed, and unmanageable momentum 
a placid milk-cart, could upon more intimate ac- 
quaintance develop. 

Leni had apparently left him to his fate. He 
felt irritated. She might at least stop and look 
back. After all, it was her old father’s old milk- 
cart. He cautiously put the thing in the middle 
of the road again, uncertain what it would attempt 
to do next, and this time he had the good sense to 
place himself in front and bear back sturdily with 
the strong little legs which Christian Lutz had spe- 
cially bought at the child-market. In this manner 
he got the recalcitrant cart well in hand, and was 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


43 


relieved to see that it could not again take the bit 
in its teeth and run away with him. 

He now overtook Leni, who once more turned 
her grave face toward him and said : 

“ Eight.” 

They tramped on silent as before, but when they 
came to the next hill Leni put her hand on the 
cross-piece and pushed with him. 

“ I know how to do it myself, without any wom- 
an-folks,” Franzl informed her. 

The young girl took no notice of his arrogance, 
but continued to help him. Again, at a steep de- 
scent she made herself useful, steering the cart bet- 
ter than he could. 

“You can’t do it all at once,” she began. “I’ve 
gone with the cart until to-day.” 

“ Oh, have you ? ” he returned, with more respect 
than he had hitherto shown. 

“ I’m too old to go with it, since father can af- 
ford to have somebody else,” she remarked, quietly. 

“ You look awful old,” he assured her. 

“ I told father to buy a boy at Bavensburg. He 
had to go down there to see a man who owes him 
some money. I told him he’d better get a boy. 
You’re not as stupid as some.” 

Franzl, secretly flattered, answered negligently : 


44 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


<: I don’t call this much work. I could pull a 
heavier cart than this.” 

The tall strong girl looked kindly and with a 
slight smile at the breathless, flushed little boy. 

“ It is heavy for me,” she said, simply, “ but that 
is not the reason why I didn’t want to pull it any 
more.” 

“ Did your father buy me because you said so ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Does he do everything you tell him ? ” he went 
on, inquisitively, thinking it would be a lucky con- 
dition of things if Leni were captain, instead of 
Christian Lutz. 

“ When it suits him, when he thinks it for his 
advantage ; but not often,” she replied in her se- 
rious fashion. “Father is a very prudent man.” 
She gave a little sigh, and Franzl feared that the 
peasant was captain after all — Leni’s captain as 
well as his own. 

The cart was now conducting itself with much 
discretion, and Franzl’s joy was profound, especi- 
ally as he saw other carts and other boys coming 
into the main road from byways. Beaching behind 
him and before him was a line of green carts, 
some drawn by dogs, some by women, many by 
children, but not a boy was so small as he. He 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


45 


observed that women with baskets of vegetables 
and eggs on their heads joined the procession, all 
bound for the Wynburg market. 

“ I’m glad you told him to buy me ! ” he ex- 
claimed, warmly. 

“ You try to please him,” returned Leni. “ He 
v is very pious. Nobody is so religious as father. 
He’s at church as regular as the parson,” she said, 
with considerable family pride. “ But if he gets 
anything into his head against anybody, nothing 
and nobody can drive it out.” 

“ I think there is more chance of pleasing you,” 
Franzl replied, heartily, for he was fast growing 
used to Leni, and her quiet sensible face inspired 
him with confidence. He could not help wonder- 
ing why she was so serious. The other women 
were chattering, laughing, calling to one another. 
Leni bade them good-morning as she passed, but 
joined no gossipping group. Straight, tall, clear- 
eyed, her basket of salad on her head, she went 
steadily on with the little boy, spoke little and 
smiled less, yet with every step he liked her better. 
It seemed a long time to him since they had 
carried his mother off to the churchyard. The 
queer thing about the lump in his throat was that 
he never knew when it was coming. 


46 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


“ Wliat is the matter ? ” asked Leni, abruptly. 

“ Nothing,” Franzl muttered. 

“ Are you tired ? ” 

“ No.” 

“ Are you in trouble ? ” 

“Don’t know.” 

“ But you are crying.” 

“ Girl’s cry when they are tired. Boy’s don’t,” 
he informed her, in a proud but choking tone. 

She smiled. 

“ Girl’s cry for a great many reasons, sometimes 
good ones, sometimes not. But it is no sin for 
them or you. I’ve seen already that you are no 
baby. What is it, Franzl ? Are you homesick ? ” 

Now Franzl did not know what he was, whether 
homesick or in trouble, or anything else. He had 
not slept much — for he had been on his first rail- 
way journey — till late in the night, and not even a 
boy can really sleep when he is jolting up and 
down for dear life, besides being jammed as flat as 
a squashed mosquito on the window-pane. He had 
been walking for days, had seen strange sights and 
people (as wonderful to him as things were to 
the great Ulysses on his more extended travels) ; 
he was honestly proud of his cart and of himself, 
and doubly pleased with his importance when he 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


47 


beheld all his colleagues with carts — many of them 
men and women. Just now he happened to wish 
his mother could see him with the cart, and the 
lump came ; but the reason he was crying, so far 
as he knew, was because something in Leni’s voice 
made him cry, and he just wished she wouldn’t, so 
there now ! 

They had come to the cross-roads where the inn 
called “The Linde” stood. Leni pointed to the 
stone bench on the corner. 

“ Sit down and rest a minute,” she said, at the 
same time slipping the basket from her head to 
the high stone shelf or table. The child sobbed 
hard a few moments. He had not wept like that 
since the day his mother died. 

Leni scanned the many roads winding away to 
distant hills, and the many figures far and near, 
tramping by meadow and orchard and vineyard. 

“ It will be a good market,” she said. “ There’s 
old Mariele the butter-woman. She has five good 
hours to walk and we have only two, Franzl.” 

“ I can walk a great deal more than five hours,” 
he assured her, huskily. “ I don’t call that much.” 

“Come along now and don’t cry any more. 
They will think we have been beating you.” 

Leni slipped her basket from the stone table, 


48 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


which was as tall as she, to her head and walked 
on, saying nothing more until she saw that the boy 
was calm again. 

“ See here, Franzl, you’re not a bad kind of boy. 
I don’t like boys much. They are rough and sly, 
and not worth much till they get older — sometimes 
not then. I have my opinion of men folks.” 

“ Pauli’s mother doesn’t think much of them 
either,” Franzl remarked, sagaciously. 

“ Who is she ? ” 

“The woman who made me sell myself. She 
isn’t afraid for Pauli. He’s steady like her. But 
Josef is sulky. He takes after his father. And 
they only pay twenty marks for little Yroni, but if 
they will be easy with her, she doesn’t mind. I 
suppose she’s got cold, for she had a shawl over 
her head and her man’s hat, too. He’s broken his 
leg in two places. It’s an inconvenient season 
for broken legs. But men folks always make all 
the trouble they can, and women folks always have 
the worst of it. Lord, this is a world ! ” 

Leni laughed, but Franzl hadn’t the faintest 
idea why. 

“ You have a good memory,” she said. “ Pauli’s 
mother was kind to you ? ” 

“ Yes — like you,” returned the child, simply. 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


49 


After a while she rejoined : 

“ People don’t call me kind very often. Yon see 
I have my own ways. But I’ll be kind to you. I 
promise you that. Some day you may tell me 
about your home and what made you cry. Not 
now, for we are coming into the city. I suppose 
you are lonesome? I suppose you want your 
family ? ” 

“ Oh, no, I don’t want it now,” he broke out 
eagerly ; “ because I shouldn’t know what to do 
with it, you know, and I couldn’t take care of it 
right, myself ; but I’m going to have it later, as 
sure as you live.” 

Leni, somewhat preoccupied, did not pay par- 
ticular attention to his enigmatical remarks and 
eagerness. 

“ You see, Franzl,” she said, “ some people are 
lonesome with their families, and some are lone- 
some without them, and nobody can get out of his 
own skin.” 

“ Oh, oh ! ” exclaimed Franzl, not at her philoso- 
phy, but because he saw the city down in the misty 
valley : many church- spires ; smoke rising from a 
forest of chimneys ; the sun shining on metal and 
glass ; so many, many houses, and a flood of sun- 
light. 


50 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


Recovering from his first amazement and fearing 
that he might have seemed too much overcome, he 
said, superciliously : 

“ It would be handsomer with snow-peaks ! ” 

Missing Leni, he looked back. 

She was standing where a narrow path from 
some vineyards met the high road, and a good-look- 
ing young man in a blue blouse was talking ear- 
nestly with her by a stone wall. 

“ I can’t stay,” Franzl heard her say. “ You 
oughtn’t to stop me here. It will only make more 
trouble. You must have patience, Karl.” 

“But can you hold out, Leni? Are you sure? 
He’s a hard man, your father.” 

“ I am his daughter, I am hard too,” and her 
mouth set sternly. “ Go back now, Karl. Please 
don’t let them see you. Half the village is coming 
down this morning.” 

Franzl had turned the cart that he could stare at 
them better, and was listening with interest, but he 
did not hear what Karl answered just before he 
ran back into the vineyard. It seemed to please 
Leni, however, for she smiled and smiled and 
looked quite different. 

“ Franzl,” she began, hurriedly rejoining him, 
“that is our first house — the big one by the park, 


A BATTLE AND A BOY, \ 


51 


with the piazza and garden. You must notice 
everything and learn all you can, so that soon you 
can come alone. They take a great deal of milk 
there ; there are children, and they want it before 
seven, for they go off early to school. The cook is 
kind. It is a good house, one of the best.” 

She put her hand on the pole and the two to- 
gether ran the cart down a short hill at a break- 
neck pace, and with motion enough to churn the 
milk. The cart obeyed Leni as a well-trained 
horse obeys its master, while it still had coltish 
tricks with Franzl. 

They crossed a paved court and went up a flight 
of stairs. 

A door was flung open at the top, and a boy of 
about Franzl’s size, a small silver watch open in 
his hand, called imperiously : 

“ Here, you little rascal, what do you mean by 
keeping me waiting ? You are five minutes late ! ” 

Franzl scowled with a will over his big milk 
can, while Leni said, coolly : 

“ Then Herr Kurt will have to eat five minutes 
less time at breakfast, or run five minutes faster to 
school.” 

“ Oh, it’s you, is it, Leni ? ” 

“ Don’t scold that nice little boy ! ” cried Hilde- 


52 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


gard, whisking on to the scene on one toe, and try- 
ing ineffectually to trill on a very high note. She 
had once been to the opera, and ever since had 
cherished the intention of becoming a great singer, 
but sometimes she confused the spheres of the 
prima donna and the ballet. 

“ Hush, children, you’ll wake mamma,” said a tall 
fair-haired girl. “Good-morning, Leni. Good- 
morning, little boy. Be quiet, children. Kurt, 
how can you ! ” 

“ Oh, don’t you wish I was a deaf-and-dumber ? 
Mamma doesn’t mind my noise. She only minds 
Hildegard’s,” Kurt retorted, mockingly. 

“But you are twice as noisy as I. Isn’t he, 
Doris?” 

The older sister drew them both into the kitchen, 
which, with its blue and white tiles and polished 
copper saucepans, seemed magnificent to Franzl, 
but he could not really enjoy the sight because 
that grinning Kurt was looking at him. Franzl 
wished he had him out on the road without any 
women folks about. 

But Leni was measuring the milk, and he had to 
attend to business, postponing his schemes of ven- 
geance and merely glaring after Kurt’s handsome 
coat as it disappeared from view, when Doris 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


53 


marched her explosive young brother and sister 
into the breakfast-room. 

“ So this is the boy ? ” Nanni the cook said, 
kindly. “ Quite a little man.” 

“ You’ll look after him a bit at first, won’t you ? ” 

“ Of course, but you’ll come again ? ” 

“ To-morrow, yes, and until Franzl gets sensible, 
and understands.” 

“ I’m sensible,” Franzl declared, as soon as they 
had left the house. “ I can pour out that milk.” 

“ Pouring the milk isn’t the hardest part of it,” 
she returned, dryly. “ You looked as if you wanted 
to pour it on Herr Kurt’s head. Now, you cannot 
tell what will happen in any house. You have to 
take it as it comes, whatever it is. But business 
is business, and if you undertake to bring people 
milk, it’s milk they want and nothing else. They 
don’t ask whether you are footsore or hungry, or 
pleased or angry, or what troubles you’ve got in 
your heart. That isn’t what they buy. They buy 
milk. Remember that, Franzl. That’s what you’ve 
got to learn. Besides, Kurt isn’t a bad fellow, 
either.” 

“I’ll punch his head,” Franzl interrupted, 
fiercely. 

“ I don’t care if you do, but you can’t when you 


54 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


are on your rounds with the cart. It isn’t honest. 
You promise the people to bring the milk. You 
promise me. You say you are big enough to run 
this business. Then you can’t punch heads till 
afterwards. Besides you’ll have too many to 
punch. There are too many boys. Don’t you see ? ” 

Franzl did see. He was obliged to acknowledge 
the force of the argument. After thinking a while 
he muttered : 

“But I’ll remember them all and punch them 
some time.” 

Leni smiled. 

“ Better forget,” she said, kindly. “ And don’t 
mind Kurt. He can’t help it. He doesn’t mean 
any harm. He’s never had anything to do but to 
go to school, and play, and amuse himself, and 
wear good clothes, and eat all he wants. If he 
should hammer a tune with an iron hammer on 
their big mirror, his mother would think it pretty 
manners.” 

“ I’ll hammer him ! ” exclaimed Franzl. 

“ What for? We were five minutes late. They 
are our first customers. They ought to have their 
milk at seven, sharp. I usually get there ten or 
fifteen minutes early, and have a chat with Nanni. 
But you were a little slower, not being used to the 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


55 


cart, and then we stopped a while at the stone 
bench you know. Herr Kurt might have spoken 
pleasanter, to be sure. Sometimes he oversleeps 
and is late himself. Still he has a right to his 
milk at seven, and it is the milkman’s business to 
remember that.” 

“ I don’t care what he said,” persisted Franzl, 

“ it’s the way his monkey-face looks that makes 
me mad.” 

“ Oh, never mind him,” Leni returned, placidly ; 

“ that’s silly. I used to mind such things my- 
self, but going about with the milk into so many 
houses year after year, you learn a good deal. 
Perhaps you’d act worse than Kurt, if you never 
had to work, and when you sneezed somebody 
thought it sweeter than a nightingale.” 

“I never heard a nightingale,” Franzl said, . 
brightly. 

“ You’ll hear them this summer up in the bushes 
and low trees near us.” 

“ Oh, what is that ? ” he exclaimed, pointing to 
a tall draped figure on a high pedestal in the park 
they were passing. 

“ Well, I don’t know exactly,” Leni replied, with 
indifference. “ It is a kind of a big brown woman 
without much on. I saw her when they were put- 


56 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


ting her up. Then they strapped on that cloth to 
cover her through the winter, and I’ve heard that 
they are going to unstrap it and uncover her, some- 
time this spring, and stand round her, and make 
speeches and sing, and the prince will be there. 
It is queer the things they are always getting up ; 
but I suppose it amuses them, and they haven’t 
much to do, and might as well do that as any- 
thing else.” 

“ If I didn’t have anything to do, I’d do some- 
thing better than that.” 

“ What would you do ? ” 

“I’d ride on the railway a whole year with a 
whole seat all to myself.” 

“ I don’t think I should like that. I should be 
afraid. The rich people seem to like statues,” she 
continued. “ I don’t mind the white ones down in 
the King’s park, they look so clean. But this is a 
queer brown thing. But there’s to be a fountain 
and a dog’s basin, and seats in the shade, and 
that’s a good thing as you’ll find, for it’s a long 
pull from the market in the summer, and straight 
up almost the whole way, and a body’s glad to rest 
a minute and breathe, and you needn’t look at the 
big brown woman unless you want to,” she con- 
cluded, carelessly. 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


57 


This was the first art lecture which Franzl ever 
heard. Leaving the shrouded Galatea behind, 
Leni cheerfully introduced him to the next house 
on his beat. From this time they were very busy, 
being now in the heart of the city and having to 
serve customers rapidly. Up and down long 
flights of stairs, across courts, into shops, Franzl 
carried the can and measures, and Leni let him 
pour out the milk, and even sometimes take the 
money and make change. He learned fast under 
her watchful tuition, and kept the accounts in a 
little book. 

Everywhere she had a word to say of the families 
to whose needs she ministered — not a long gossip- 
ping tale, but some hint of the household interior 
which would have vastly surprised her customers. 
For walls have ears, and cooks have tongues, and 
Leni among strangers was a silent young person, 
who could listen, observe, and learn much. 

“ They are unhappy in this house,” she informed 
him, “all at sixes and sevens.” 

“ Unhappy in such a beautiful big house ? ” 

“ The wife goes to balls all the time, and the 
husband is pale and does nothing but work. He 
takes his coffee alone when the milk comes. She’ll 
have hers in bed hours later.” 


58 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


“ Why doesn’t he make her get up and go to 
work ? I would.” 

“ Here, Franzl, we have a pint to take up five 
flights. It’s such a nice customer. You’ll see.” 

Up they went to a small room where a hand- 
some young man in his shirt sleeves sat at a table 
littered with books and papers. He was singing 
so loud that he did not hear Leni’s first knock. 

“ Ah, there you are, Phyllis ; and who is the 
curly pate? I thought you had no brothers or 
sisters ? ” 

“It’s the new boy, Herr Professor. Father 
bought him at the child-market.” 

“Professor in spe ,” remarked the young man, 
holding a small cracked pitcher for Leni to fill. 

“ My compliments to your father. He has eyes 
in his head. Come here, you young faun.” 

He smoothed back Franzl’s tangled curls and 
looked with so searching a glance in the brown 
rosy face that he plunged the boy into profound 
embarrassment, particularly as he didn’t know 
whether “ faun ” was a term which he ought to 
resent or not. 

“ He’s going to bring the milk alone as soon as 
I teach him.” 

“ What, a partner ? A useful and respectable 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


59 


citizen at his age? It is more than I am. 1 
shall miss yon, Leni. How are things going ? ” 
he asked, kindly. 

“No better, thank yon,” she returned with a 
blush, “ about the same.” 

“ Courage,” he said, heartily. “ You are young 
yet,” taking a little coffee-machine from its hon- 
orable place on a Greek Lexicon. “ If ever I 
can do anything for you, Leni, come, or send the 
faun.” 

“ You have a kind heart, Herr Professor.” 

“ Oh, as to that,” he said, smiling, and secretly 
wishing that his bank account was as kind as his 
heart. 

“ What does in spe mean ? ” demanded Franzl 
the instant they reached the street. 

“Oh, it doesn’t mean anything,” Leni said, 
calmly. “ It’s only his nonsense.” 

“ Why did he call me ‘ faun ? ’ What is a ‘ faun ’ 
anyhow ? ” 

“ Oh, I don’t suppose it is much of anything,” 
Leni replied with not a trace of interest. 

“ What was it he called you ? What kind of a 
thing is a Phyllis ? ” 

“ I never hear his queer talk,” she said, indul- 


60 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


gently. “ He is so kind. You don’t know how 
kind he is. Didn’t you like him ? ” 

“ I don’t like to be called names I don’t know 
the meaning of,” Franzl replied, with dignity. 

He was silent and thoughtful some time, and 
looked up occasionally in Leni’s face with a puz- 
zled expression. She had seemed so wise and 
old to him. 

At length he asked : 

“ Does he know more than you ? ” 

“ I suppose so,” she said, negligently. “ He 
doesn’t know more about cows, or farming.” 

“ Why does he sit at that table ? ” he broke out, 
impetuously. “ What does he want of such piles 
of books ? He’s a big man. Nobody can make 
him go to school. Why doesn’t he go out of 
doors ? I’d go hunting and fishing. I wouldn’t 
sit cooped up in the house ! ” 

Leni looked surprised. 

“ Why, what a pepper-box you are, about noth- 
ing! I suppose he likes his books. He sings 
over them and seems happy. And he does go 
hunting and fishing sometimes. He doesn’t get 
all he wants in the world any more than some 
other people.” 

“ What’s his name ? ” 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


61 


“ Herr Arno Theobald.” 

“He’d better talk like other people and go 
a-fishing,” persisted Franzl, doggedly. 

“Perhaps I’ll tell you more about him some 
time. You know, Pranzl, I don’t tell tales about 
my customers to everybody. It is only because 
you are my partner. I don’t know when I’ve 
talked so much as to-day. I’m rather still 
mostly. But you’ll be careful, Franzl.” 

“ I know enough to hold my tongue. I’m not 
a girl.” 

“ I hope you do,” she went on, earnestly. 
“ And Franzl — ” hesitating — “ about that little 
talk at the side of the road this morning — there 
by the vineyard — you won’t say anything about 
that, will you ? Not to anybody ? It would do 
harm. And it wasn’t my fault. You’ll under- 
stand when you’re older.” 

Franzl looked at her with an air of reproach. 

“ I understand now. I know about — lovers ,” 
he said, grandly. “ I’ve seen some in the Yenter 
Thai. There’s a good many of them there.” 
He spoke with cold remoteness as of specimens 
of an extinct race. “ I shan’t say anything about 
you.” 

“ So much the better,” returned Leni, quietly. 


62 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


“Wait here, Franzl, I’ll go in alone. They are 
good people,” she explained when she came back, 
“ old ladies, sisters. I always need a little time 
for them, they are so interested in everything and 
everybody. If yon had gone np, they would 
have been so surprised, it would have taken too 
much time, and I should have had to tell more 
than I know about you. Now come on fast. 
Take care ! Big teams can’t turn out for you. 
Here we are at the market.” 


IY. 


One of the prettiest sights in every great city is 
its market, and each has its special charm: each 
tells the traveller, intrepid enough to sacrifice his 
morning slumbers and go down among the veritable 
pillars of society, a tale not told by fashionable 
shops or even monuments and museums ; each 
shows him a picture not easily forgotten, a glimpse 
of warm pulsating life. He feels for an instant the 
strong undercurrent of toil sweeping on beneath 
the surface-bubbles of his easy existence ; he per- 
ceives much that is beautiful, much that is rough 
and repulsive, more color, more freshness, more 
smells, good and bad, than he knew existed, and 
the most sordid traffic, the most ignoble haggling, 
detestable because greedy, pardonable, since its 
source is for the most part need and anxiety ; and 
he goes away more thoughtful than he comes — a 
healthful condition for most of us — and detects, on 
that day at least, a few fundamental facts below the 
glittering superstructure of his hotel-dinner. 


64 


A BATTLE AND A BOY \ 


Nowhere is the market prettier than in Wyn- 
burg. Where else in the world do so fascinatingly 
ugly old women, with their baskets of vegetables 
on the ground in front of them, sit and knit and 
gossip in the sunshine on the warm side of such 
castle- walls ? Where else do so severely noble 
towers rise from a jumble of booths and carts, of 
cries and calls in the ear-rending Suabian dialect ? 
Where do rosy chestnut-spikes mass themselves in 
such richness, and trees serenely claim their royal 
right of way, occupy the best places, and refuse to 
yield to the pressure of trade. Where do visions 
of sixteenth century knights, with a fierce troop of 
mounted men, dash out of a picturesque arcaded 
quadrangle, and create sad havoc among peaceful 
piles of vegetables, and incongruous old wives 
knitting in stolid unconsciousness of their his- 
toric background ? From the open square behind 
the church where the Schiller statue stands, down 
to the great glass building, the market proper — 
through the queer crooked tunnel - like streets di- 
verging from the original market place of centu- 
ries ago, where a few ancient patrician houses 
still display their unmistakable lineaments — the 
whole region in the heart of the modern city is 
full of charm even without the motley life which 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


65 


surges beneath the silent old towers three days in 
the week. 

Leni and Franzl were not disturbed by phan- 
tom knights, and the beauty of the castle did not 
enter their innocent thoughts, which were bent 
upon getting the cart successfully through the 
crowd, and took keen notice of the general condi- 
tion and quantity of cabbages, carrots, spinach and 
cauliflower, and all manner of salads and cresses 
from brook and meadow. 

In the corner of the market building was Leni’s 
stall with a cool chest for her remaining supply of 
milk. She had relapsed into her silent mood, say- 
ing only what was strictly necessary and looking 
grave, almost stern indeed. But she gave Franzl 
a piece of black bread and a small cup of milk, 
and told him to sit down and rest a few minutes 
on a box near her, where he perched contentedly, 
greatly relishing his repast and staring with won- 
dering eyes at the ever-moving crowd in the great 
building so full of noise and light. 

Leni seemed to be a person of considerable im- 
portance. Women employed by her father came 
to her to report, ask advice, complain or gossip a 
bit. For the most part she sent them off quickly 
with a cold business-like air, after a few sharp in- 


66 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


‘quiries. Often she would appear suddenly where 
she was least expected and listen silently to the 
bargaining between a shrewd cook bent upon her 
advantage and the equally shrewd old woman 
whose province it was to represent Christian Lutz’s 
interests. All her father’s people seemed to be 
always aware of her presence, and her still cold 
manner had more weight than the scolding and 
abuse of the others. 

“ Proud thing ! ” Franzl heard a woman, whom 
Leni had reproved for some negligence, say spite- 
fully. “ Since she can’t have her way with old 
Christian, she’s bound to have it with us.” 

“ I don’t know what is the matter with the girl,” 
sneered another. “ Why doesn’t she take Klumpp 
and be done with it and wear a decent face on her ? 
She can’t do better than the biggest farm for miles 
around, even if Klumpp has got the palsy and one 
foot in the grave and it isn’t very lively at his 
house. A farm like that ! What more can a girl 
want ? As for Karl, she might as well give him up 
first as last. Old Christian never changes his 
mind. If she doesn’t look out she’ll fall between 
two stools, and serve her right. A man sixty years 
old can’t wait forever for a silly girl. There she 
goes, with a face like a stone image and not a civil 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


67 


word for anybody. What are you staring at ? ” she 
demanded roughly, making a dive at Franzl, who 
was listening open-mouthed to these revelations. 

“ You,” he responded, impudently, having sprung 
to a safe distance and saluting her with a series of 
leers and grimaces. 

Leni beckoned to him. 

“Don’t be silly,” she said, coldly. “Babies 
make faces. Remember you are in business.” 

He felt ashamed, and tried hard to look seriously 
upon his new honors and responsibilities, and to 
struggle against a tendency to enlivening little dis- 
sipations, such as occasional whoops and yells in 
the ears of the people who had walked half the 
night and were now napping at their posts. He 
was also pursued by the gnawing desire to make 
faces at persons who called him “rascal” and 
“ good-for-nothing ” and “ brat,” terms which were 
flung about freely at the market, not so much on 
account of the mischief that any particular boy was 
actually doing, as from a large comprehension of 
the latent talent of the genus. Franzl finally made 
a mental compromise between his natural inclina- 
tions and his growing wish to please Leni, and de- 
cided to take no notice of “ rascal ” or “ good-for- 
nothing ; ” but as “ brat,” for some occult reason, 


68 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


was particularly obnoxious to bis fiery tempera- 
ment, to respond to it with his most diabolical face 
provided he thought Leni wouldn’t see. As for 
boys, he didn’t count them. A little scrimmaging 
and scuffling must go on as a matter of course. 
Even Leni didn’t demand total abstinence in this 
respect except when he was on duty — responsible 
for the safety of the cart. 

He worked well all the long day. Sent with 
vegetables after a lady, and following her through 
the strange streets of the city, he lost his way on 
the return-trip and wandered about helplessly for 
some time. Again Leni spoke coldly to him : 

“ It is babyish to lose your way. You have eyes, 
you notice, and your memory is good.” 

“ In the woods or the mountains it’s different,” 
he stammered, “but the city makes such a noise 
and all the streets look alike.” 

“ Don’t do it again,” she said, and turned away. 
Eranzl silently vowed he wouldn’t, and, thus put 
upon his mettle, and expected to do his best, he 
did it, counting streets, making mental notes of 
signs, fountains, monuments, conspicuous buildings, 
anything that would serve as landmark, for it cut 
him to the soul to hear the word “babyish ” from 
Leni’s lips. 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


69 


Business slackened perceptibly toward noon. 
Leni sent him on an occasional errand; but he 
had time to think harder than ever in his life be- 
fore, when he really could come to himself after 
the bewildering changes of the last few days, and 
sometimes it seemed to him he must be quite a 
different boy from Franzl Beiner. 

In the first place, he felt as if he had always 
known Leni, yet he never saw her before that very 
morning. It was very queer. It was as if her 
smooth, dark head, her quiet face, and her voice 
had been familiar to him always in Heilig-Kreuz. 
What did those old things mean by calling her 
proud ? Proud girls wore gay clothes and beads. 
Leni was dressed in a plain dark gown, and wore 
her hair in a long tail with no bright ribbon on it. 
She looked all straight and smooth. Then she 
wasn’t proud. That was silly. What did they 
mean by saying she’d better give up Karl ? Karl 
was very nice. He had merry eyes. He had 
looked at her as if he saw nothing else, not even 
the milk-cart. But Leni had glanced about every- 
where as if she was frightened. Franzl wondered 
if Karl had a gun, and if he’d ever shot a 
chamois. But no, they had no chamois. The 
mountains were too low. Perhaps Karl had a long 


70 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


hunter’s knife. He was big and strong. He 
looked only at Leni. That was because they were 
lovers. Lovers always looked at each other. Max 
and Luise did, and so did Georg and Bosine, and 
Benedikt and Beate. Afterward something hap- 
pened, and Benedikt went away and Bosine didn’t 
look at anybody for a long time, and then she 
looked at Ludwig. Oh, yes, he knew very well 
what lovers were. It was foolish of Leni to sup- 
pose he didn’t. She forgot that he w~as eleven. 
Of course it was different when you liked people 
and when you didn’t. He liked Leni. He hated 
Kurt. He wished he had Kurt’s watch-chain, and 
would fight him if ever he caught him in the 
street. When you like people awfully it’s lovers. 
That’s the way his father and mother were, and 
his mother and he, and he and Loisl. When Loisl 
was big enough to live with him, he would buy 
her a blue frock like Fraulein Doris’s with ribbon 
danglers. The mother said : 

“ Some day you must be together. Some day 
you will be a young man and she still a wee girl, 
and you must take care of her. She is all the fam- 
ily you have, my poor Franzl, and you are all the 
family she has. If I could take you both with me ! 
The way will be long and hard for you, but you 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


71 


are my brave, loving Franzl. You will grow to be 
a man and take care of her.” 

She said it that very last day when she was so 
white and her eyes were strange. She told him, 
too, that it was better for him to go away, better 
for him and better for the others, for nobody had 
more than enough in the village, and there were 
too many boys already, and while people were kind 
and would take care of Loisl — his Reverence prom- 
ised it — he must go among strangers and work his 
way, but never forget his little sister. Perhaps 
something good would happen. It did sometimes. 
All the neighbors would be good to Loisl. His 
Reverence would see to the papers and send him 
to the child-market. Konrad had gone three 
springs ago and taken a place for the summer, and 
liked his master. There were good people every- 
where. If Franzl was good he would find them. 

Then she put her two hands on his head and 
held them there long — long, and his heart was 
bursting because she said she must leave him all 
alone, except for Loisl, and ever since, when he 
thought of her, and that was often, his heart 
swelled and his throat choked. 

It used to be pleasantest when his father came 
home after a long liunting-tour with the strangers. 


72 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


All the room was bright when he strode in with his 
big gun, filling the room with his laugh, and telling 
everything that had happened. The mother made 
pancakes, listening and smiling always, and Franzl 
sat on his knee and laughed too, whether he un- 
derstood or not. After the father was gone, the 
room was never so bright again, and the mother 
never smiled so and listened. Still, while she was 
there, he had not missed his father so much. Now 
he missed them both, the mother most, for he had 
been always with her. And here he was on a box 
in the Wynburg market, and there was no mother, 
no father, no cottage, no warm stove and pancakes, 
no snow-mountains, no brook foaming over the 
rocks. That was why it often seemed as if there 
were no Franzl any more. 

When he put his hands over his ears tight, and 
then removed them suddenly, and did it again and 
again, it made the great hum — like big bees — come 
and go, nearer and farther. Leni said more milk 
would come down for the evening customers. 
Then he must take it to more big houses. When 
he was a man he was going 'to have a big house 
himself and live in it with Loisl. How much 
would a blue gown with danglers cost, he won- 
dered ? But first Loisl must have a short red frock 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


73 


like Fraulein Hildegard’s. She was a nice little 
girl. She had a leaf in her hand. He hated 
Kurt, and would hit him the very first chance — 
sure ! That old woman with the carrots had a face 
exactly like a nut-face, such as his mother used to 
make for him ; eyebrows like smooches of ink ; a 
nose that went in before it came out, and a chin 
that ran away into her kerchief. The nut-woman’s 
head was stuck on a stick with red sealing-wax. 
The old woman’s kerchief was red, and she was like 
a stick — like two sticks when she walked. 

He wondered how long it would take him to save 
money enough to buy a big house for himself and 
Loisl. When he left Heilig-Kreuz he had meant 
to have a cottage ; but to-day, seeing so many big 
houses, he had changed his mind. From his 
pocket he slowly removed a piece of twine, several 
smooth stones, an apple -core, a lump of lead, a 
rusty broken nail, a cork, a four-bladed knife with 
three blades gone and all but the stump of the 
fourth, a pill-box, a much-chewed pencil, a dead 
beetle, some tar, some wire, a bit of green bottle- 
glass, a tin box- cover with a hole bored in it, chips, 
beans, bread-crumbs, and finally the coin Christian 
Lutz had given him at the child-market, the first 
money he had ever owned, together with a bit of 


74 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


nickel a lady liad paid liim for an extra errand, and 
which Leni said he might keep, as it was not for 
milk. 

Stuffing his other treasures back into his pocket 
he regarded the big coin and the little one medi- 
tatively. When he was a man he was going to be 
bright and strong like his father, and Herr Arno 
Theobald, and Karl. It was queer that none of 
them had a big house. Why did the cross old 
men have all the money and farms and vineyards, 
and the pleasant young ones with merry eyes not 
have what they wanted? He wasn’t going to be 
like that. He was going to have what he wanted ; a 
silver watch and chain like Kurt’s, and a big house 
— bigger than Kurt’s — and he was going to laugh 
like his father and look pleasant like Karl and Herr 
Arno Theobald, for if you looked stern, and had the 
palsy, and a bald head, it didn’t seem much fun to 
have vineyards and cows. 

He wished he knew better how much things cost, 
watch-chains and houses, for instance, and he’d like 
a top very much. But his mother said : “ Save all 
you can earn.” If he got a top, he wouldn’t have so 
much left for a house. Then perhaps he could fight 
a boy and get his top, which would be cheaper. 
Some time he would ask Leni some of these things. 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


75 


She came toward him, thinking, involuntarily, 
little as her life had led her to consider personal 
beauty, what a strikingly handsome boy Franzl 
was ; what a bold and proud air the little beggar 
had in his shabby, dirty clothes. They were too 
bad to patch she decided, examining him carefully 
as she approached. She would soon make over an 
old coat of her father’s for the child. It wasn’t re- 
spectable for Christian Lutz’s bought boy to look 
so poor, and he was a bright, affectionate little fel- 
low, rags or no rags, she concluded, while Franzl 
built his castles in the air, gazing at his coins and 
proudly rattling them. 

“Shall I take care of them? ” she asked. 

He considered a while before reluctantly passing 
them to her. 

“ Pockets have holes,” he said, gravely. 

“ I will help you to save your money.” 

“ May I look at it and touch it when I want 
to?” 

“ Of course.” 

“ Then you’d better keep it. You don’t have to 
fight. You see when you fight, sometimes you get 
turned upside down and lose things. I am going 
to save a great deal. There are some things I must 
buy, some time.” 


76 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


“ It won’t trouble me to take care of all tliat you 
can save,” slie replied, gently. “ But you must send 
it home, mustn’t you, Franzl? Your family will 
want it ? ” 

“No, my family doesn’t want it yet. I can save 
my money if I want to.” 

“ So much the better.” 

“ And I do want to because I must have a great 
deal by and by, when I’m grown,” he went on, with 
calm conviction. 

Leni was not sentimental, but she did not look 
without wonder and vague pity at the ragged little 
urchin who had sold himself for fifty marks to a 
hard master, and could yet speak in this bright, 
sure way of money and future plans. 

“Time will tell, Franzl,” she returned, indul- 
gently. “ The best thing is to do well what you 
have to do each day.” 

“ I’m going to have it, while I’m pleasant- look- 
ing, like Herr Arno Theobald and your Karl,” he 
went on, to her astonishment. “ I’m not going to 
wait till I have the palsy like old Andreas Klumpp ? 
or get fat in the waist like your father.” 

Leni colored deeply at his extraordinary allu- 
sions and stared at him in increasing surprise. 

“ I’m going to have a big house and I’m going 


A BATTLE AND A DOT. 


77 


to hang my father’s gun that they are keeping for 
me on the wall ; and my family and I are going 
to live there together. You may live with us too, 
if you want to. It’s going to be a bigger house 
than Kurt’s, and I’m going to have a longer 
watch-chain.” 

“ Franzl, Franzl, who told you such things? 
What do you know about old Andreas ? ” 

“ The women were talking. That one over there, 
the one with the big frog mouth, called you proud, 
and the one with the green-striped apron said you 
couldn’t get your way with old Christian and so 
you were bent on getting it with them,” he repeat- 
ed, with scrupulous exactness. “ You aren’t proud, 
are you ? You haven’t any beads. They don’t 
know what is the matter with you. Why don’t 
you take Klumpp and be done with it, and wear a 
decent face on you ? What more do you want 
than the biggest farm for miles and miles? As for 
Karl, you might as well give him up first as last, 
for old Christian never changes his mind. If 
you don’t look out, you’ll fall between two stools, 
and serve you right. A man sixty years old, 
with the palsy and one foot in the grave can’t wait 
forever for a silly girl. It isn’t very lively at his 
house.” 


78 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


Leni listened with changing color. Her face 
grew sad and old. 

“Do yon remember every word you hear?” 
she tried to ask, carelessly. 

“ Yes,” answered the child. 

“ It isn’t worth while. It was silly talk.” 

“ Oh, yes, it was silly. Women are sillier than 
men.” 

She stood a while lost in troubled thought. 

The boy — beautiful, smiling, resolute — swung 
his heels from his high box, and, undaunted by 
his rags and homelessness, looked fearlessly into 
the future. 

At length Leni with a sigh roused herself from 
her meditations and met the frank gaze of his 
happy, handsome eyes. His rough curls were shin- 
ing in the sunlight, his cheeks glowing like dark 
peaches. He smiled trustfully, as if he belonged 
to her. 

She hoped he would forget the women’s talk. 
It w r ould make her ill at ease to feel that the child, 
with his dreadful memory, was speculating upon 
her most private affairs. Probably he wouldn’t 
understand or think of them much, even if he did 
repeat the spiteful chatter, word for word, as if it 
were his lesson. 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


79 


“ Franzl, yon are modest, yon are ! ” she began. 
“ Why don’t yon say you’ll have the moon ? ” 

“ Because I can’t live in it,” he replied, cheer- 
fully. “I’m going to have something I can live 
in.” 

“Well, wishing’s cheap,” she returned, dryly, 
“for both of us. In the meantime there is al- 
ways work to do, and here is old Wally with the 
evening milk.” 


Franzl worked with a will, but as he found him- 
self in a community where everybody worked un- 
remittingly, no task surprised or dismayed him. 
While he pulled and tugged and strained his young, 
growing body to the utmost limit of its strength, 
and was dead tired every night when he threw him- 
self upon his bed of hay, in close proximity to his 
equine and bovine comrades, the open air and sun- 
shine, the winds, night-dews and rains, all seemed 
to exert happy and healthy influences upon him, 
and he grew tall and strong like a young birch 
by the brookside. 

He never, perhaps, had quite all that he could 
eat ; but, on the other hand, he was not incom- 
moded with headache, stomach-ache, and other 
ills which made Kurt von Normann extremely 
peevish and uncomfortable on the day after 
Christmas, and the days after birthdays and all 
high family feasts, when people indicate their 
affection and felicity by eating too many sweets. 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


81 


Every day Franzl rose at half-past four, and 
took his milk to the city, walking up and down 
hill two hours or more, those beautiful, fresh, 
spring mornings, and making his rounds punctu- 
ally. The three market-days he remained all day 
in Wynburg, returning usually with Leni toward 
evening. On other days he went directly back to 
Waldheim and worked on the farm or in the vine- 
yards — weeding, digging, mending walls, feeding 
cattle and pigs and hens — wherever, in short, he 
could be made useful. As it never occurred to 
him that anyone was stronger or abler than he — 
humility not being his chief virtue — he was often 
laughed at for attempting the impossible, but his 
willingness and zeal won respect even from the 
older farm-laborers, and Lutz, who never praised 
or seemed satisfied with anybody’s efforts, secretly 
felicitated himself upon his shrewdness in select- 
ing the little Tyrolean’s muscle and staying-power 
from all the young flesh at the Eavensburg mar- 
ket. 

Franzl soon learned a fine control of his milk- 
cart, and steered it coolly at a breakneck pace 
down the steepest roads. When, in the morning 
or evening twilight, twenty or thirty boys by 
chance appeared simultaneously on the same hill, 


82 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


shouting and hooting and careering like demons, 
rattling and running their carts like mad, they 
seemed a wild horde of outer barbarians coming 
with hideous machines of destruction to invade a 
peaceful land rather than simple rustics minister- 
ing to innocent domestic needs. Among them all 
no one yelled in a more demoniac fashion, none 
drove his chariot with more apparent recklessness, 
more real ability and aplomb, than Franzl. 

He felt a peculiar sense of ownership in the 
houses on his circuit, and every tale wdiich Leni 
told him that first morning remained sharp and 
clear in his mind. “ This is the house where the 
pale man works hard and the woman goes to par- 
ties all night and takes her coffee in bed at noon.” 
“This is the house where nothing particular 
happens.” “ This is where everybody is always 
on horseback.” “ Here is the cross cook.” “ This 

m 

is where they always try to get the milk a penny 
cheaper.” “In this house the two kind old ladies 
want to know everything and are always so sur- 
prised and ‘ Oh ’ and ‘ Ah ’ till one can hardly get 
away.” “ This is where there’s a nice fat baby, 
bigger than Loisl, and not so puckery,” and it 
would have been a shock to the nurse’s nerves, 
had she suspected that the rather dirty little milk- 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


83 


boy, wlio looked up so curiously at the child in 
her arms, was thinking how much he would like to 
see its toes. 

Best of all he enjoyed going to the Normann’s 
beautiful home, and to Herr Arno’s room under the 
roof. The young man was handsome and strong, 
kind and merry, and would indeed have been 
altogether perfect in Franzl’s eyes if it were not 
for the queer and puzzling words, which had a pe- 
culiar effect upon the child and made him uncom- 
fortable and restive. In his new atmosphere he 
was indeed roused necessarily to a certain sur- 
prised consideration of language, since at every 
step he was confronted with differences between 
his Tyrolean speech and the harsher Suabian dia- 
lect and his peculiarities of accent and phrase in- 
duced much free comment and laughter. Still it 
was easy enough to learn to adjust his language to 
his surroundings, and above all to find out what 
working-people meant. Often Herr Heinrich, a 
friend of Herr Amo, was there, and then the words 
were awful ; but they caused Franzl no lasting 
distress unless addressed to him. One morning 
Arno, chatting with his friend, happened to call 
the beautiful rosy boy pouring milk into the 
cracked pitcher a Ganymede, whereupon Franzl 


84 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


ran off brusquely, feeling unhappy and desper- 
ate. 

“ Oh, I wish he wouldn’t,” he thought. “ I’d 
rather he would call me ‘ Brat ’ and be done with 
it. When he smiles and looks so pleasant, and 
I’m not expecting anything in particular, and he 
fires one of those awful names at me, I feel as if 
I should burst.” 

“What does Ganymede mean?” he asked Leni 
that night. 

She was exceedingly busy. 

“ Oh, Franzl, don’t be tiresome,” she returned. 
“How shpuld I know? It’s Herr Arno’s non- 
sense again, isn’t it ? What on earth does it mat- 
ter?” 

“ But do you know ? ” the boy persisted. 

“ No.” 

“ Does Karl know ? ” 

“ No, he doesn’t. He’s got something better to 
do.” 

“ Does your father know ? ” 

“ Not he.” 

“Does Andreas Klumpp know?” 

“ Of course not.” 

“Well, then, who does know? ” 

“ Why, people like Herr Arno, to be sure. No- 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


85 


body who has to work bothers about words. But 
in the school they must know, Franzl.” 

“No, they don’t. I’ve been to school myself, 
and I never heard any such talk.” 

She wondered at his dreary manner, and said, 
kindly : 

“ I wouldn’t trouble my head about it. It has 
nothing to do with us or with work. It goes in 
one ear and out the other when I hear it. I’d for- 
get if I were you.” 

“ I can’t,” he replied, gloomily. “ I try to, but 
I remember every word. There’s an awful lot 
of them now. Seventeen from ‘Phyllis — ’ ‘in 
spe — ’ ‘ faun — ’ to ‘ Ganymede.’ That’s the worst 
yet.” 

By dint of much reflection it gradually became 
clear to him that there were more than two kinds 
of people in the world. Between rich and poor he 
perceived differences unsuspected in the Venter 
Thai; not, however, vast differences when both 
classes worked. Christian Lutz was rich, and he, 
Franzl, was poor ; but as he was going to be rich 
by and by, and as Lutz worked as hard as any of 
his farm-hands, the distinction did not seem like a 
yawning chasm between them. Between people 
who worked and people who didn’t there was a 


86 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


more amazing difference, Franzl concluded, and 
speculated much upon it ; the lady who never got 
up in the morning, for instance, and the family 
who were always in the saddle — surely they were 
rich, yet not like rich Christian Lutz. He saw 
this plainly and it puzzled him. He had been 
categorically taught that laziness was a sin, also 
that people who didn’t work must sooner or later 
starve. Among his milk customers he discovered 
many who neither worked nor starved, and who 
did not appear to regard themselves as sinners. 
But clearest of all grew his new conviction that 
there was still another difference between people, 
the great mysterious one of ivords, for he began 
to suspect that Herr Arno had no monopoly of 
them. Franzl had positively ascertained that none 
in his immediate circle knew or cared about the 
hidden meaning of Theobald’s language. Then 
who did know and care ? Herr Heinrich for one. 
The people on the road talked of prices. Coming 
and going from market, it was always how much 
things cost. The men in the village, too, talked of 
either prices or crops. Why didn’t people all talk 
alike ? If Herr Arno would fling queer words at 
him, angrily, they wouldn’t occupy him an instant. 
He knew what to do and how to feel when he was 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


87 


insulted. But the kind voice and smile were what 
made him wretched, and caused the mysterious 
talk to mercilessly haunt and perplex him. Some 
days Herr Arno said nothing incomprehensible, and 
the child breathed freer, for his list was long and 
every new word caused him fresh aggravation. He 
had a way of muttering rhythmically to the ac- 
companiment of a creaking wheel, and many a mile 
he tramped saying his words, like a witch’s charm 
or some ancient chant, with never a mistake ; and 
it is a pity some great philologist did not hear the 
boy ; for while the scholar would not have had the 
faintest inkling of the truth, and could not, with 
Franzl’s arbitrary division of syllables — to make 
them fit the cart-accompaniment — have distin- 
guished the words, he would have discovered in 
the innocent prattle the remains of some primi- 
tive folk-song, with familiar Aryan roots, upon 
the strength of which he would have promulgated 
highly erudite theories, to his enduring satisfac- 
tion and renown and the envy of his colleagues. 

Many important things occupied Franzl’s alert 
mind. The birds in the beautiful woods — through 
which he passed twice a day — a pond where 
there was a prosperous commonwealth of frogs, 
lizards on the vineyard - walls, all the orchards 


88 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


and fields of grain, all the people, all the horses 
and dogs. There was always enough to think of, 
both on the long country road and down in the 
busy city. Indeed he never felt that he had got 
his thinking half done, and he wished he did not 
fall asleep the instant he closed his eyes at night, 
for if he could only have stayed awake a while, 
he might have gotten rid of some odds and ends 
of thought which he never quite knew what to do 
with. 

The Normanns were a daily source of pleasure, 
excitement, and wrath to him. The pleasure and 
excitement began with the sight of the major in 
a splendid uniform, who usually rode out of his 
court-yard as Franzl and his cart came in. The 
boy would pull off his cap, the major responded 
with a fine salute and a smile. Wrath followed 
speedily. Kurt, for no reason in particular, but 
merely because he had happened to begin the 
acquaintance with hostilities — perhaps, too, from 
contrariness, since his sisters praised the little 
milk-boy — lost no opportunity to make himself 
odious to Franzl, who remembered every offence 
as faithfully as Herr Arno’s words, and stored them 
away against the day of reckoning. Nanni, the 
cook, was a kind, motherly soul, whom experience 


A BATTLE AND A EOT. 


89 


had taught that boys can always eat, even if they 
are fed upon the fat of the land ; also, that a milk- 
boy is not apt to be pampered, no matter how 
rosy and bright he looks. Being a privileged per- 
son in the Normann household, she put aside many 
good things for Franzl. The pretty young lady, 
Fraulein Doris, he seldom saw unless the children 
were quarrelling worse than usual. Fraulein 
Hildegard frequently honored him with her pres- 
ence, for she was a lively young person who made 
it a point to appear wherever anything was going 
on. At this time of the morning very little was 
going on except the kitchen. Hildegard was curi- 
ous as a magpie, and liked to see everybody who 
came, whether by the visitors’ or servants’ en- 
trance. As she was also kind, there was all the 
more reason why she should pirouette into the 
kitchen and keep a restraining sisterly eye on Kurt, 
who was habitually hateful to that nice little boy. 

Hopping, twirling, standing on one leg like a 
stork, she seemed to regard herself as a theatre 
and enjoy her own performances hugely. She 
sang her most ordinary requests, and always had 
a leaf or twig in her hand or mouth. Franzl ad- 
mired her vastly. 

One day she said to him : 


90 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


“ Little boy ” — she always called him little boy, 
although he was bigger than she — “don’t you 
want to bring me some pussy-willows? I saw 
some yesterday when we were driving, and mamma 
wouldn’t stop to let me get them. They are on 
the bank by the little bridge where you come 
every day.” 

He agreed gladly, and she told him he was the 
nicest little boy she ever saw. 

He brought her a great bunch of catkins the 
very next morning. Hildegard was delighted. He 
did not see Kurt, and Nanni gave him a generous 
slice of cake, with plums in it, for which three 
reasons he left the house in high spirits. But 
alas ! the innocent catkins, like Beauty’s rose, were 
destined to make mischief. Herr Arno gave him 
no trouble that day. Toward noon he was on 
his homeward journey, whistling and singing in a 
contented frame of mind. As the sun was hot on 
the long hill, he stopped an instant in the shade 
of the little park in front of the Normanns’ house 
listening to the cool plash of the fountain, mildly 
regarding the big brown woman, and wondering 
why they had put up those four awfully queer 
things — half woman and half cat — on the terrace 
by the fountain, and if there w r ere really cat- 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


91 


women or women-cats, with that queer stare and 
their paws stretched out. Suddenly Kurt, carry- 
ing some books with a strap, came up the wind- 
ing walk through the shrubbery to the open 
lawn where Franzl stood with his cart. Now 
Kurt was in the worst possible humor. His 
father had promised him a horse if in a certain 
examination he should be No. 1 in Latin and 
mathematics. He had worked hard and felt con- 
fident of success. Whether he had been too ex- 
cited or too sure he did not know, but to his oyer- 
whelming disgust and irritation two fellows, who 
usually stood below him, had passed in better pa- 
pers, and although first in Latin, he found himself 
third in mathematics; an honorable enough place 
in a class of forty, but he knew his father, and that 
there would be no horse for Kurt Normann this 
time. He had bragged of the horse far and wide. 
That was the trouble. Friends as well as enemies 
had not refrained from pointed allusions to this 
famous steed, and Kurt, angry, mortified, and 
ready to vent his spleen on the first-comer, came 
slowly home from his failure. 

Franzl, from habit, scowled fiercely at the ap- 
proaching foe. Kurt stopped, and all his rage 
against himself, his teachers, his comrades, the 


92 


A BATTLE AND A BOY . 


world, and fate, seemed to concentrate itself in a 
desire to quarrel with this insolent milk-boy stand- 
ing motionless by his cart. 

“Here, you dirty little beggar,” Kurt began, 
with no plan of attack whatever, but conscious of 
vague and vast belligerent intentions, “what do 
you mean by — by — by — by bringing catkins to 
my sister ? ” he concluded with sudden inspiration. 

Here was Franz! s longed-for opportunity, but 
there was the milk-cart. It had grown to be sec- 
ond nature to take care of the insignia of his pro- 
fession, and Leni’s precepts had sunk deep with- 
in him. One hand still on the pole, he stood 
poised ready to spring. 

“You keep your weeds for your own dirty little 
sister,” Kurt sneered, as a purely random shot, 
“ and let mine alone. If I see any more of them 
in my house I’ll switch you with them.” 

At this moment a young man who was sitting on 
a bench with his back turned came toward them. 

“ I say, Kurt,” he began — 

But before he could finish, Franzl had swung 
the cart round, thrust the pole into Herr Arno’s 
hand, and flung himself with all his strength upon 
the boy who had insulted his sister. 

Arno, recovering from his surprise, gravely ac- 


A BATTLE AND A BOY . 


93 


cepted the trust, sat down on a stone moulding, 
and let the boys fight. It occurred to him that 
a sound thrashing might be a desirable sanitary 
measure for Kurt Normann, and something that 
had failed for some time. There was also a cer- 
tain humorous satisfaction in the consciousness 
that Kurt’s mamma, who systematically spoiled 
him and prevented him from being the good fel- 
low he might otherwise become, was in the house, 
whose windows looked over garden -walls and 
shrubbery upon the field of battle where her 
high-born darling was about to be thrashed by a 
milk-boy. For Arno had not the faintest doubt 
as to the result of the contest. Kurt was going 
to be unmercifully beaten. 

The boys were evenly matched as to size. Kurt 
was the older, and well-trained in gymnastic exer- 
cises ; but no gymnasium three times a week could 
do for a boy what the mountains and hard, con- 
stant, open-air work had done for Franzl. More- 
over, he was by far the angrier of the two, and 
this was half the battle. “ His strength was as 
the strength of ten,” not “ because his heart w^as 
pure,” but because he was so very “mad,” while 
Kurt was already more than half-ashamed of him- 
self. 


94 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


Arno observed that Franzl, instead of spending 
his force at once in his first furious attack, seemed 
to have endless reserve-power. He showed no 
weariness, but grew fiercer and stronger, not how- 
ever from contact with mother earth ; for while 
Kurt was frequently down, gaining dirt but no 
strength, Franzl remained firm on his feet. Kurt 
fought well and bravely, but Arno, silently watch- 
ing them, thought best to interfere. 

“ There, that’s enough for to-day, boys. Stop, 
Franzl. Hold up, I say.” But Franzl did not or 
would not hear or stop until forcibly removed. 

“ Kurt, you’ll have to admit you’re well thrashed.” 

Kurt said nothing. There was blood on his 
face, a button had cut his lip, his eye was puffing 
fast, his coat was torn, his watch and chain lay on 
the ground, his wrist was lame, his leg felt queer, 
and his head ached. 

“ You acknowledge yourself fairly beaten, do 
you ? ” Arno repeated. 

“ Yes,” said the boy, faintly, feeling dizzy and 
dropping upon a bench. 

Franzl stood panting, glowing, triumphant, his 
feet still braced, his hands on his hips, his eyes 
contemplating that silver watch and chain lying 
low in the dust. 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


95 


“ Go in and ask Nanni to look after you, Kurt. 
I shall have to tell you that I think you deserved 
it. I heard what you said to him. That is why I 
didn’t interfere. Now it’s none of my business 
perhaps, but what has he ever done to you ? ” 

“ Nothing,” said Kurt, frankly enough. 

“ Then what under heaven induced you to try to 
bully him in that fashion ? ” Arno demanded with 
considerable disgust. 

“ I was red-hot mad about something else,” Kurt 
returned, with a feeble grin that was very one- 
sided on account of the aldermanic proportions his 
face was rapidly assuming. 

“ Your examination ? ” Arno asked, quickly. 

Kurt nodded. 

“ Oh ! oh ! ” exclaimed the young man, signifi- 
cantly. “ And you, Franzl, what have you against 
Kurt?” 

“I hate him,” Franzl returned with cheerful 
promptness, “ and he said something nasty about 
my family.” 

“Yes, I heard it. I’m not a great friend of 
fighting, but from your point of view I don’t see 
how you could have declined with dignity after 
that provocation. Come here and let me congrat- 
ulate you. My sympathies are entirely with you.” 


96 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


He held out his hand and Franzl, proud and radi- 
ant, shook hands with him. 

“But you are satisfied now, Franzl? You don’t 
thirst for any more blood ? ” 

“If he lets me alone I’ll let him,” the boy re- 
marked, succinctly. 

“You hear, Kurt, do you ? ” and Arno stooped 
to pick up a paper book which had fallen from 
the schoolboy’s strap. Brushing the dust from a 
page, which Franzl saw was covered with queer, 
curly writing, the young man remarked: “You’ll 
have to recopy this Greek. It is too dirty to hand 
in. I don’t like to preach when you are in that 
plight, Kurt ; but, upon my word, I thought you 
were more of a gentleman. If you don’t choose to 
remember that ‘ Noblesse oblige ’ is your Normann 
device, it is useless for me to remind you, I sup- 
pose. But as an old friend of the family permit 
me to say that if honor doesn’t restrain you, pru- 
dence should, for this young Berserker can slay 
you without over-exerting himself. Now shake 
hands, boys.” 

“ I don’t care anything about the slaying,” Kurt 
returned quickly, hobbling forward on his lame 
foot and with his lame hand extended. “Here, 
Franzl, it’s all right. You can bring anything you 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


97 


like to Hildegard. I only said tliat because I was 
in no end of a temper. I’ve always been teazing 
him, you know,” turning to Arno, “ and I do care 
about * noblesse oblige .’ ” 

But what was the matter with Franzl ? He was 
turning his cart as fast as possible, and all the joy 
of victory had vanished from his face. It seemed 
to Arno that Kurt, after all, was behaving gal- 
lantly, since it is always easier for the victor to 
forgive than the vanquished. What, then, had 
seized the conqueror’s bright spirit ? Why was he 
slinking off in this fashion, ignoring Kurt’s gen- 
erously proffered hand. He, Franzl, who always 
seemed so ardent and warm-hearted ? 

“Franzl,” Arno called, “don’t go. Shake hands 
with Kurt first, to show there’s no ill-will.” 

“Wait a minute, Franzl,” Kurt called, limping a 
few steps after him. 

But Franzl paid no heed. He went as fast as 
he could stride from the scene of his triumph and 
his bitter disappointment. 

“ Eighteen — nineteen,” he was saying to himself 
in utter hopelessness. “ ‘ Berserker ’ and ‘ bles- 
bleege,’ and Kurt knows what they mean — and 
says, 4 blesbleege ’ himself ! ” 


VL 

Akno Theobald, although in reality a happy, 
healthy, and fortunate youth, had in his own opin- 
ion his share of work, care, trouble, and uncertainty 
of a peculiarly absorbing and delicate nature, and 
therefore thought little of the juvenile fight in 
which he had acted as umpire, and which was a 
crisis in Franzl’s history. But when the little 
milk-boy appeared the next morning, shy, grave, 
and more hurried than usual, Arno remembered 
the child’s abrupt departure, and was led to instil 
into his rustic mind some idea of the etiquette 
of the duel, even of the crude and primitive duel 
with fists. 

“ How are you, Franzl? No bones broken, I see. 
By the way, why did you go off so quickly ? Why 
wouldn’t you shake hands with Kurt ? ” 

As Franzl said nothing, Arno concluded that he 
was still sullen and unforgiving, which seemed 
natural enough on the part of a poor boy whom 
Kurt Normann had persistently insulted. Arno 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


99 


liked boys, and had a special interest in boys of 
Franzl’s condition, was used to them, and succeeded 
ordinarily in understanding them tolerably well. 

“ Now Franzl,” the young man went on, good- 
humoredly, “ you really ought to have shaken 
hands with him. That’s the thing to do. For in- 
stance, two men come to fight with swords or pis- 
tols. There is some deadly wrong, or ought to be, 
if they get as far as that. Well, suppose they are 
snorting fire and brimstone. They slash or shoot. 
They draw blood. We won’t make it fatal this 
time. We’ll only let them be scratched a bit like 
Kurt yesterday. Then they shake hands. The 
witnesses shake hands. Everybody shakes hands.” 

Franzl, interested in spite of himself in this tale 
of swords and pistols, had forgotten his grievances 
and drawn near the table, smiling his winning, 
trustful smile. 

“ And when you and I consider it in cold blood, 
it is the stupidest thing in life, because if it is 
possible for them ever in God’s world to be suffi- 
ciently reconciled to grasp each other’s hands, then 
it would be wise to anticipate the action of time 
upon their enmity and shake hands in the first 
place. People don’t often hate as hard as they 
imagine they do. But, Franzl, this is how a man 


100 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


talks when he is not angry, and when he’s angry 
his blood boils as yonrs did yesterday, and he 
doesn’t think any more. Then he’s a beast. I’m 
sorry to say I’ve been one a few times in my life. 
All the same, fighting is as stupid as it is wicked. 
Remember I don’t blame you at all for fighting 
Kurt. When you are older I hope you will think 
differently, but at your age and after what you had 
borne I don’t see what else you could have done, 
and, since you had to do it, I’m glad you did it so 
well. But you ought to have shaken hands with 
him and buried the hatchet.” 

“ What hatchet ? ” 

Arno smiled. 

“ I mean you ought to have been satisfied with 
the punishment you gave him. You don’t hate 
him I am sure.” 

“ Yes, I do,” Franzl asserted, roundly. 

Arno considered an instant. 

“ Franzl, I don’t know that you quite understand 
how things were yesterday. Of course Kurt was 
in the wrong. I can’t say that too decidedly. I 
am glad on several accounts that he got for once 
what he deserved. He can make himself as in- 
sufferably disagreeable as any boy I ever saw. But 
he’s not a bad fellow at heart. He lost a prize 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


101 


yesterday, and the praise, which is sweet to him, 
and a horse, which he felt sure he wonld have for 
his own, and he was rather well pounded and bat- 
tered, and aching in every bone, yet he forgave you 
outright for thrashing him. That’s like Kurt. 
He will act like an overbearing insolent cur for 
weeks, then he turns round and surprises you with 
something so uncommonly sweet-tempered and 
generous that you can’t help admiring him.” 

Franzl was wholly unmoved by his praise of the 
enemy, untouched by the faintest sympathy for or 
appreciation of Kurt’s conduct; absorbed in his 
own thoughts the boy stared unceasingly at Amo. 

“ Talk about the ingenuousness of childhood ! ” 
he reflected. “ Only children and great diplo- 
mates know how to be inscrutable.” 

Meanwhile Franzl was making a grand resolve. 
He had nearly determined to ask about the words 
that tormented him. Pride, shyness, a stubborn 
savage reserve had always restrained him. He lit- 
erally did not know how to express the confused 
thoughts and feelings which gave him no rest. It 
was not simply asking the meaning of one word or 
many words. It was all his thinking, coming and 
going on the road. It was all that he did not 
understand in the lives of people about him, new 


102 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


things belonging to his new surroundings, and of 
which he had never thought in Heilig Kreuz. It 
was the differences — the work — why people didn’t 
talk alike, and think alike ; the whole world was 
one great Why ? to him, and he longed to launch 
it all on Arno. But he did not know how to be- 
gin. There were the words — and Kurt — Kurt most 
of all since yesterday, when he had looked up with 
his face awry and dirty and bleeding, and said so 
resolutely : “ And I do care about 4 blesbleege ’ ” 

Why did he care so much about a “ blesbleege? ” 
What was a “ blesbleege ” anyhow ? 

Franzl had never before felt so strong an impulse 
to confide in Amo. The child of late, after listen- 
ing suspiciously to the young man, hurried away as 
fast as possible, fearing that he might at any mo- 
ment let fall one of those maddening words. To- 
day, indeed, he used language which Franzl did 
not comprehend in detail, and long “ grown-up ” 
phrases, but the drift of the talk the boy followed 
without difficulty, and there was nothing offen- 
sively personal in it — no calling names. His self- 
esteem was therefore not wounded, and Arno’s 
manner was most kind and reassuring. 

He concluded his little guest was still nursing 
wrath against Kurt. What but resentment could 


A BATTLE AND A DOT. 


103 


such persistent silence mean? Children were 
rarely fiery and sullen too. Alter all, what could 
one expect of the poor little soul ? What chance 
had he ever had ? 

Franzl was looking earnestly at an open book 
near him. It had queer, curly letters like Kurt’s 
book yesterday. “ Greek,” Herr Arno had said. 
It flashed upon him those strange words might 
belong to such letters. Perhaps it was all Greek. 
That didn’t sound very bad. Something bright 
and hopeful rose in his heart. Why couldn’t he 
learn the letters. Then he w r ould know the words 
like Herr Arno and Kurt — “ blesbleege ” and all 
of them. He could thrash Kurt. Then he could 
do anything Kurt could, and beat him too. He 
smiled, caught his breath in his excitement and 
opened his lips to speak at last. 

But Arno, feeling that he had waited long 
enough for the boy’s stubborn mood to yield, 
turned away. 

“ You think it over, little man,” he said, kindly, 
going to his bookshelves. “ Perhaps you’ll feel 
different. A fight one can’t always avoid, but 
no one need be revengeful. That’s no good. 
After you have cooled down we’ll discuss the 
ethics of it again.” 


104 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


“ Twenty ! ” Franzl muttered mechanically, the 
old, discouraged, heavy feeling settling down upon 
his new hopes. Turning on his heel, he was gone 
before Arno could speak. 

“ What an odd little fellow ! ” he thought. “ Evi- 
dently his High-Mightiness Kurt will have to 
look out for himself.” 

“ Ethics, ethics — oh, dear — oh dear me — ethics, 
twenty — twenty, ethics ! ” and off went poor Eranzl, 
pursued by words as by furies. 

It happened that he had an errand to do for Leni 
that day after he had made his rounds. The streets 
did not attract him as usual. His free and sunny 
spirit had abandoned him. Keturning with his 
empty basket, he turned down a street which was 
new to him, and saw many finely dressed people 
entering the wide portals of a building that had 
no windows except in the roof. In spite of his 
moroseness this roused his curiosity. How did 
they climb up to look out the windows he won- 
dered. It was silly to put them up there. The 
windows in his house should be where they be- 
longed. 

The little boy with his basket hung about the 
entrance and saw the people come and go. Car- 
riages with beautiful horses and coachmen in 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


105 


livery were waiting. A lady with a bright red 
gown passed in. Presently he saw the red gown 
walk out. Then they must go in to see some- 
thing. How he wished he knew what. How he 
wished he could see it. Once he saw a fat woman 
and a two-headed calf in a tent. 

He drew nearer and peered in. There was a 
round room, three little marble steps, a fountain 
with large-leaved plants, and in the middle a little 
naked gold boy with wings and a bow and arrow. 
There were doors hung with red curtains. The 
people went through the door at the right under 
the looped-up red curtain. What if he should go 
in too ? Nobody at the moment was near. He 
stepped cautiously within the marble room. Only 
the little gold boy was there. There was a window 
like the ticket-office at the railway station, but no 
face behind it and no voice to tell rough boys with 
baskets to be off. Slowly, timidly, walking very 
softly, he approached the curtain, beyond which he 
heard the hum of many voices. He did not need 
to go far. Prom the threshold he saw. 

A great procession was bearing down upon him. 
Far, far back, as far as he could see, they were 
coming on through the narrow streets, hundreds of 
them, and straight toward him. They had white, 


106 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


strange faces, and wild eyes, and all of them were 
stripped to the waist, and their backs were bleed- 
ing, and they had little whips with many lashes in 
their hands, and they were lashing their bare white 
backs until they bled. They were thin and hungry 
men and boys. They carried banners and an out- 
stretched child, all skin and bone. A market-girl, 
with a cart like his, was trying to get out of the 
way. There was a great church and priests every- 
where, priests in the very front, and an awful one 
the first of all, marching on with his arm pointing 
at Franzl, calling to him fiercely, wanting some- 
thing of him, with fierce eyes fixed on his. 

Franzl was never so frightened in his life. He 
shrank behind the curtain trying to hide from the 
awful priest in front who wanted him. After a 
moment he ventured out again, and this time saw 
a broad gold picture-frame and groups of ladies 
and gentlemen smiling and talking together. 

He was ashamed that he had thought it real. Yet 
it frightened him still, and the free figures in front 
stood out as if he could run behind them. What 
did that dark awful man want ? What did it all 
mean ? Why did they whip their own backs until 
they bled? Why did they march down straight 
upon everybody and have strange, wild eyes ? 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


107 


Gradually his glance fell upon the men and 
women outside the picture frame. What were 
they saying about it ? Why did they laugh and 
turn away? What was there to laugh at? He 
hugged his basket tighter under his arm and shrank 
against the wall as some people passed out, glanc- 
ing at him with a smile which he did not like. 

He looked again. Groups had dispersed and 
formed anew. There was more room in front of 
the picture. Two ladies stood there with a boy. 
He wore yellow kid gloves and a sky-blue silk 
handkerchief over his left eye. It was Kurt. He 
smiled quite unconcerned, as if the backs were not 
bleeding, the faces white and strange, the priest 
with the outstretched arm terrible. Kurt pointed 
at something with a wise air, as if he knew all about 
it. His mother and Doris listened and smiled. 
They moved, they were coming toward the door. 

Franzl fled with hate in his heart. 


VII. 


The pale hungry men with their strange eyes 
and half -naked bodies haunted Franzl from that 
day. He dreamed of them, he saw the great white 
procession bearing down upon him whenever he 
closed his eyes. That foremost priest beckoned 
with imperious gesture from any dusky corner of 
the barn, advanced from dim woods in the twilight, 
stood out commandingly on the rolling heath, and 
faded in purple mists over the distant hills. But 
the child did not ask Leni what the picture meant. 
He often looked at her wistfully and was silent. 
For he had learned that her world was not the 
world of the others — of Arno and Boris and Kurt. 
They cared for things which did not exist for Leni. 
Their language had for her no meaning and no 
worth. His new thoughts made him less sunny 
and gave him no peace ; but neither they nor the 
words and the procession would let him go. Leni 
thought he was growing old fast, and feeling his 
long questioning gaze fixed upon her, asked him 
one day if he was not well. 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


109 


She herself began to look pale and ill. Some- 
times in the morning her eyes were red. Her 
grave, firm face lost its repose, grew anxious and 
nervous. There were market days when she did 
not go to the city. Franzl heard the women say 
Lutz was making things hot for her. Often the 
father and daughter talked together after the day’s 
work was done, which was something quite new, 
and nothing made Leni seem so tired as a talk 
with her father. 

Franzl was strongly attached to her. Next to his 
little bundle of family at home, he loved her better 
than anyone on earth, tramped contentedly by her 
side going to market, missed her when long away, 
and was glad to come back to her quiet familiar 
face. He did not like to see her look so hollow- 
eyed. His mother had looked so, too. Some- 
times he did not know whom he hated worse, Kurt 
von Normann or Christian Lutz. 

When he first came to Waldheim he liked the 
city better. Wynburg was full of excitement and 
fascination. He approached every house on his 
rounds with interest and curiosity, and something 
pleasant almost always happened. The noise and 
sights of the streets were wonderful, he had much 
to learn, was zealous and ambitious. But now that 


110 


A BATTLE AND A BOY . 


he had mastered his duties, thanks to Leni’s good 
training ; now that he had grown accustomed to the 
city, and the customers were used to his bright 
eager face, and the newness of all things had worn 
off ; and most especially since he had become con- 
scious and uneasy on account of his ignorance — 
sensitive, resentful, yet helpless — his instinct was 
to stay in his own world, where he understood 
what was going on, where people, even old people 
like Lutz and Klumpp talked more or less as he 
did; where young men did not, in the kindest 
fashion, make him miserable with words beyond 
his ken ; and where no dandy-boys whom he could 
thrash stood, waving yellow kid gloves, before a 
wonderful picture as full of moving men as the 
crowded market, and grinned and looked the other 
way, and talked carelessly as if it was not alive 
and terrible. 

So Franzl had his peculiar reasons for liking 
Waldheim and the farm better than Wynburg. 
He drew more within his shell each day; grew 
business-like and taciturn on his rounds, even 
with kind Nanni. Arno was out of town for a few 
weeks. His absence gave Franzl incredible relief, 
although he missed him too. If the young man 
unwittingly tortured the child, Franzl liked him 


A BATTLE AND A BOY . 


Ill 


nevertheless, and admired him vastly. The boy’s 
warmly affectionate heart clung more than he 
knew to the people who were good to him, and 
who were unconsciously shaping his life ; Fraulein 
Doris, who spoke so sweetly ; little Fraulein Hilde- 
gard, who was so kind, and so very astonishing 
with all her whims and capers. Nearly every 
morning he would secretly slip a little bunch of 
wild flowers for her behind a milk-pan or pitcher, 
to be discovered by Nanni after he was gone. As 
he was always troubled or irritated when the 
slightest notice was taken of it, Nanni learned to 
look the other way when he hid it, and not to 
thank him. He liked them all. He thought 
much of them all. But he knew now that they 
were “ different,” and therefore he would rather 
work all day as hard as he could on the farm than 
come down to the city among them, their queer 
words and gentle ways. They only gave him 
more thoughts, and it seemed to him that he al- 
ready had more than he could carry. It was bet- 
ter in the fields with the men ; it was best with Leni. 

One Sunday evening Lutz had gone to the vil- 
lage inn to smoke his pipe and drink his beer with 
Andreas Klumpp and the worthies who congre- 
gated in those murky precincts. Leni and Franzl 


112 


A BATTLE AND A BOY . 


sat at the door of the isolated farm-house which 
stood far back from the main-road. It was a still 
warm August night. Over the fields floated now 
and then echoes of laughter and song, voices of 
men and girls returning noisily from their rollick- 
ing Sunday outing in some neighboring village — 
approaching, passing on, leaving everything quiet 
as before. All was silent near the two except for 
the deep comfortable breathing of the great yellow 
Leonberger asleep at Franz! s feet. The young 
girl in the doorway, her elbows on her knees, her 
chin in her hands, stared unseeing, into the deep- 
ening shadows under the linden-tree. Franzl was 
wondering how long Herr Arno and the Normanns 
and many other customers would be away. Half 
of his houses were closed, and the market was so 
dull that he was scarcely needed down there. 
Where did the people go? Why did they go 
away from their beautiful big houses ? When he 
had one all his ow T n he was going to stay in it. 
Fraulein Hildegard said they went every summer 
to the sea and played on the hard sand beach, and 
she couldn’t swim, but Kurt could. Franzl wished 
he knew how it looked up there, but he could swim 
without any sea, and better than Kurt von Nor- 
mann. If he could get Kurt in the water, first 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


113 


he’d duck his head and then he’d show him some 
tricks. He hadn’t had a swim since last summer, 
and he loved it so ! He was the only fellow in 
Heilig-Kreuz that could swim. There wasn’t 
much chance up there. But he was glad his fa- 
ther was a swimmer and made him learn. Here 
there was chance enough. Perhaps Leni would 
let him go to the river some day, only it was so far, 
and there was always so much to do. He got up 
from the bench against the house, stretched him- 
self and yawned audibly. 

“ I think I’ll go to bed, Leni, I’m sleepy. We’ve 
got to do the third field to-morrow,” he said, with 
his important and responsible air. 

“ Would you mind staying up a little later to- 
night, Franzl ? ” she returned, after some moments, 
and timidly, not in her ordinary manner. 

He was a little surprised, for she usually was 
careful to send him off early ; in fact earlier than 
he wished to go, but he answered promptly : 

“ Why, no. You see a fellow only goes to bed 
because he doesn’t know anything else to do. I 
don’t think much of bed anyhow.” 

He reseated himself with a swagger, and pres- 
ently, as Leni said nothing, he employed himself 
in stifling a series of deep-rooted yawns. 


114 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


Suddenly the big watch-dog rose and stood alert 
and on duty listening, his nose pointed toward the 
orchards. 

“ It is nothing, Wolf.” Franzl told him. 

“Keep still, little boy, I know better,” Wolf 
responded in his own fashion. 

Leni put her hand on the dog’s head, murmuring : 

“ It is a friend. Wolf won’t bark.” 

“ Do you hear anything, Leni ? ” 

“Not yet. He’s too far; but — come Franzl, 
come with me. Lie down, Wolf. Take care of the 
house. No, you can’t come. You stay here. You 
know who it is.” 

Wolf stretched his muzzle along her arm and 
reluctantly consented to remain. 

“ It’s all very undignified,” he protested ; “ but 
pray do as you like.” 

Franzl, wondering, followed Leni past the loom- 
ing black barns and into the dark orchard. The 
girl went swiftly and noiselessly on the turf, until 
they were at some distance from the house. 

“ There, wait here,” she said. “ I’ll go on a 
little. I won’t be long.” 

“ Are you going to meet Karl ? ” the boy asked 
calmly. “ Georg and Kosine used to meet in the 
dark.” 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


115 


“ Never mind them. Be good, Franzl. If you 
hear any noise from the house, sing or whistle.” 

“ Shall I whistle or shall I sing ? ” 

“ Either. Both.” 

“ Shall I sing ‘ The High Aim ’ or ‘ The Tyro- 
lean and His Child? ’ ” 

But Leni was gone. Franzl crept under an 
apple-tree, where it was soft, still, and dark, and 
there was a mound for a pillow. He concluded 
to get some of his thinking done while waiting for 
Leni. Years after, this summer night was vivid in 
his remembrance, and he saw Leni’s pale, pained 
face stealing off like a shade among the black trees, 
and life and his own heart taught him what it all 
meant. But now he reached up and filled his 
pockets with green, stony balls — frustrating nat- 
ure’s beneficent intention to transform them into 
dark red apples by October — and diligently 
gnawed them, stretched flat on his back. Fond 
as he was of Leni, her griefs and her romance 
troubled him at the moment no more than if he 
had been a heartless young cannibal. 

He wondered idly what had happened to Pauli, 
and did not believe Pauli could pull the milk-cart 
better than he, even if Pauli was bigger. He 
closed his eyes and saw the crowd at the child- 


116 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


market, and all the boys and girls crying : “ Buy 
me ! ” grew tall and changed into the white, fierce 
men in the picture and this was the last he knew 
until he felt a hand on his shoulder. 

“ Franzl, Franzl, all Waldheim might come to 
find me and you wouldn’t hear ! ” Leni was saying 
in his drowsy ears. “ Get up, Franzl ! ” shaking 
him. “Wolf is cleverer than you. He’s awake in 
an instant.” 

“ I am perfectly awake,” he declared, offended. 
“ I was only getting some thinking done, and then 
I forgot a little.” 

She had spoken brightly and kindly. She 
laughed at his explanation, took his hand and 
hurried on till the sleepy child was nearly breath- 
less. 

“ How queer you are, Leni ! ” 

“Am I ? Fm a little happier. That is all.” 

“ Well, I wish you wouldn’t go so fast that I 
stub all my toes. Can you see in the dark ? ” 

“ Yes, to-night. Don’t be cross. I know you 
are tired and sleepy. We’ll soon be at home. 
Then if it weren’t too late I’d tell you some- 
thing, even if you are only a little boy.” 

“ I am strong and large for my age,” he re- 
minded her. 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


117 


“ I know you are, and sensible.” 

Mollified, he went on cheerfully. 

When they reached the house, Wolf came for- 
ward a few slow steps to meet them, satisfied him- 
self that they had returned intact from their fool- 
ish expedition, and stretching himself, like a great 
yellow lion, at Franzl’s feet, contentedly resumed 
his slumbers. 

“We have been good friends, you and I, from 
the first day, haven’t we, Franzl?” she began, 
hesitating slightly. 

“ Why, yes, Leni ; of course.” 

“ Are you tired ? ” 

“ Not now. Not a bit,” he returned, brightly. 

“ Because it is quiet to-night. Perhaps I could 
tell you things. Sometimes I feel as if my mouth 
was sealed. Then I have no one to speak to. If 
my mother had lived, it would be different.” 

“ Oh, do grown people want their mothers too ? ” 

“ Sometimes more than little boys do.” 

Franzl had never thought of that. 

“ I never wanted her more than now,” Leni went 
on, simply. “It is hard to hold out three years 
against your own father. I don’t like cheating 
ways, Franzl. I haven’t seen Karl to speak with 
him since the first day you went with the milk. 


118 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


I have had to tell him something. Father is like 
iron. He’s at me all the time now. First he said 
November. When I told him I’d run* away first, 
I’d never marry Andreas Klumpp, he said he’d 
give me till February, and if I’m not ready and 
willing then, he’ll turn me out of doors. Father’s 
orderly. He has to do everything by the quarters 
— whether it’s rents or cows or sheep, or marrying 
me.” 

“ I wouldn’t marry old Andreas Klumpp either.” 

“ It is the farm, Franzl, and I don’t want mead- 
ows or orchards or barns or cattle. I’d rather have 
the smallest house, the smallest room with Karl.” 

“ Why, yes, I should say so,” Franzl assented, 
cheerily. “ I should too. He’s young and pleas- 
ant looking and hasn’t got the palsy. And then 
he’d be your family, wouldn’t he ? ” 

“Yes; that is what we want,” the girl said, 
softly. “ We’ve wanted it years.” 

“He’d be a great deal better kind of family, 
than— than anybody round here,” Franzl remarked, 
somewhat diplomatically. 

“ Karl has always been my family. He came to 
work here like you, when he was no bigger than 
you, and I was a little thing.” 

“ Did he sell himself? ” 


A BATTLE AND A BOY . 


119 


“ No ; he was the child of people in Waldheim. 
They died, and father took him to work for his 
board.” 

“ Did he get fifty marks ? ” 

“ Not at first. He was always good to me. He 
was here when my mother died. She loved him 
like a son. Father never had such a worker. 
There’s nothing Karl can’t do. Father can find no 
fault with him except lie’s poor. But haven’t we 
enough ? And Karl so kind, and so industrious ! 
It was three years ago father found out that we 
liked each other. He was terribly angry and sent 
Karl off that very night, and forbade me to speak 
to him. But I did not promise I’d not speak to 
him. It’s all too old for you, Franzl.” 

“ But I understand very well. There’s nothing 
at all hard to understand about liking and not lik- 
ing. I could tell you some things that are hard ! ” 
“ I’ve been useful to father. I was a young girl 
when mother died. People thought he’d have to 
have some woman here to look after things. But 
I did everything just as mother used. He didn’t 
seem to miss her, the work went so well. And 
ever since Karl had to go and I know how hard 
father felt toward me, I worked still better, trying 
to please him. It was about a year ago he made 


120 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


tip his mind I should marry Andreas Klumpp, and 
I’ve worked as I never worked before. In the 
house, at the market, with the accounts, with the 
milk — and I’ve looked after everything, the cattle, 
the market-garden, the men on the farm. Wher- 
ever a sharp eye, a willing hand, and quick feet 
could help, they have helped my father, and he has 
profited by them, and he knows it. The women 
may say I am proud and cold and stiff, but they 
can’t say I don’t work. Nobody can.” 

“ No they can’t, Leni. You work like six.” 

“ Well, Franzl, it doesn’t do any good — and I’m 
tired — not of work, but of the fight between father 
and me. Wdiether we speak or not, the fight is al- 
ways going on. No matter how hard and long 
work is, it comes to an end some time, and you can 
draw a deep breath and say : “ That’s done, thank 
Heaven.” But if it’s inside of you, if it’s two peo- 
ple pulling in different directions under one roof, 
and each is tough as the other, it is awful, it tires 
you out soul and body. If I tell father Jenny’s 
giving less milk, we look in each other’s eyes and 
see Andreas Klumpp. If father tells me to ask a 
penny more a pound for tomatoes, neither of us 
can forget Andreas Klumpp.” 

“ Confound old Klumpp ! ” Franzl muttered. 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


121 


“ He’s like a black shadow over eveiytliing. And 
lately it is worse, much worse. Father is as hard 
as a rock. He is determined to force me now. 
When he was so silent and I was so silent month 
after month, I used to wish he would speak. Now 
he has begun to speak, I’d give my life if he’d be 
silent again.” 

“ It isn’t at all like a family,” Franzl said, 
thoughtfully. 

“ It’s bad enough.” 

“ And if you had a little room with Karl, you’d 
have a warm fire and a bright light and you’d 
make pancakes — big ones and a great many — 
wouldn’t you? And he would joke and laugh and 
you’d be smiling and listening ? ” 

The boy’s clear voice full of confidence and in- 
terest was startlingly loud in the stillness. 

“ Hush, Franzl, you sound like a trumpet. 
Don’t shout that to all Waldheim. But you may be 
sure,” she continued, with a happy little laugh at 
his picture, “ I’d make what Karl liked, pancakes 
or anything else : and if I can almost manage a 
whole farm, year after year, when my heart is 
heavy, it’s reasonable to believe that I could make 
one little room cosey and bright if I felt hopeful 
and glad.” 


122 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


“ Then you must have him,” Franzl declared, in 
a tone of positive conviction. “Cheer up, Leni. 
I’ll help you.” 

Leni laughed again. Franzl was so absurd, like 
a strutting little turkey-cock, sometimes; but he 
was as good as gold, and no child was so sturdy 
and faithful. 

“You do help me,” she said, affectionately. 
“You have helped me from the day you came. 
You see last year father was at me about Andreas 
Klumpp, and in the winter we were both silent and 
sullen. One day I remembered that he never did 
anything for me. It wasn’t often I had a wish ; 
but if I had one, it didn’t move him any more than 
if I was one of the cows. It seemed to me if he 
would do one single thing I asked, my chances 
would be better in other ways ; but if I never was 
consulted, if I always was ordered and driven like 
the cattle and the farm-hands, why then he would 
be so used to my dumbness it would be worse for 
me in the thing I cared most for. So I made up 
my mind I would try to have a voice in something. 
Just then the Waldheim women were beginning to 
talk. They can’t talk enough about it.” 

“ No, they can’t. I hear them.” 

“ I feel older too. I’d always gone on doing my 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


123 


work and not thinking of anything else except Karl. 
But now I wanted to be alone and to keep away 
from the women. I knew father had the largest 
farm except Klumpp’s, and was able to hire all the 
help he needed, so I thought when he was going 
to Kavensburg I’d ask him to buy a boy for the 
milk-cart. I talked quiet and reasonable. I said 
he was a rich farmer and I his only daughter, and 
I was too old to go with the milk. This was how I 
tried to make him hear my voice, and he did. He 
said nothing, but he bought you. I had a feeling 
all the time that you would bring me good luck. 
I felt kind to you before you came. I wanted you. 
I remembered how pleasant it used to be when 
mother was alive and Karl was a little boy and 
took care of the cows. I thought a great deal 
about you.” 

“ Was he big and strong like me ? ” 

“ I don’t know that he was. I don’t know that 
anybody was ever so big and strong as you feel, 
Franzl.” After a moment she went on : “ But now 
it doesn’t seem to have helped, though he did what 
I asked. And all my good work doesn’t help. 
Nothing touches him. Perhaps he bought you so 
that somebody would understand the milk-cart and 
the business after he’d married me to Klumpp. 


124 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


Perhaps he didn’t really hear my voice. Perhaps 
he only thought he’d have me train somebody to 
fill my place. And I have trained you well, Franzl ; 
I’ve done my best, and you’ve done yours. He 
knows it, though he says nothing. He sees how I 
try day and night to please him. But it’s no use. 
He’s got it into his head his farm and Andreas 
Klumpp’s farm must marry.” 

“ When I’m a man and have a beautiful house 
and the other things I’m going to have, I shall help 
the pleasant young people against the old cross 
ones. I shall make the rich old men give some of 
their land to the young who haven’t any, and I 
shall help the ones who want to be families.” 

“ Ah, Pranzl, then you’ll be very different from 
the rest of the world. Up here in Waldheim father 
and Andreas Klumpp are only doing what the Nor- 
manns and others are doing down in Wynburg. 
There’s Fraulein Doris. She likes Herr Arno. 
She has always known him. He’s given her some 
sort of lessons too, and been a great deal in the 
house. He has no money and no place yet. They 
want to marry her to Count Kosen. His land in 
the country is next to the Normanns’ land, but it 
is a sin to marry acres together instead of hearts. 
He’s in Hannover at the officers’ riding-school, and 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


125 


head over heels in debt — mean debts too. But 
next spring there’ll be trouble. She never will 
take him. Herr Arno is worth a dozen of him — 
but there, if you are poor, you haven’t much 
chance ! ” 

“ Ho Herr Arno and Fraulein Doris want to be 
a family too ? ” Franzl asked in great astonishment, 
picturing another warm room and more pancakes. 

“ Oh, dear, yes.” 

“ Does she know about you and Karl ? Is that 
why she comes out and asks so pleasant, ‘ How is 
Leni to-day ? ’ ” 

“Of course she knows. Nanni is a Waldheim 
woman. She has been in the Normann family 
twenty years, first as nurse, then as cook. She has 
taken more care of Fraulein Doris than ever her 
mother has. And I’ve brought milk to the house 
eight years. Of course you see into things in that 
time. Besides, Fraulein Doris and I are the same 
age to the month.” 

“ O — h,” exclaimed Franzl, “ you look miles 
older ! You are so dark and sober — not that you 
don’t look very nice, and I like you best — but 
Fraulein Doris is all white and soft.” 

“ She has never worked,” Leni said, simply and 
without bitterness. “ It is work that ages women. 


126 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


I’ve often thought of that, going to so many houses 
and seeing the inside of things. With us you can’t 
sometimes tell whether a woman is twenty-five or 
forty. But look at Frau von Normann — she might 
be twenty-five.” 

“Well, I don’t know — if she didn’t purse up 
her lips,” Franzl remarked, critically. 

“But you see, Franzl, even pretty Fraulein 
Doris is wishing for something she can’t get. Ev- 
erybody is.” 

“ I’m not.” 

“ O Franzl, the big house.” 

“ Yes, but I’m going to have it. There’s a great 
difference between wishing for what you can get 
and for what you can’t.” 

He did not understand why she laughed as she 
replied : 

“ Wish away, Franzl. Wish hard and work 
hard. You have heard a deal of grown-up talk 
to-night.” 

“ Oh, I don’t call this very old.” 

“ It won’t hurt you, since there’s nothing to be 
ashamed of. I haven’t been meeting Karl behind 
father’s back ” 

“ Like Georg and Rosine,” Franzl said, gravely. 

“ Or sending him letters on the sly ” 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


127 


“ Like Max and Luise.” 

“ If I met Karl to-night, it was right.” 

“ Of course. He is your real family.” 

“ I had to see him once more, face to face. I 
had to tell him I had given up trying to soften 
father, and that he says I’m to marry Klumpp 
next February, or be turned out of the house. I 
have told Karl he must have some sort of home 
ready for me by that time. He must get a place 
somewhere, a gardener’s place I’d like best, but I 
don’t much care. He’s only working in his cous- 
in’s vineyard now. He knows the farm, every 
inch of it. I always thought when father should 
see how in earnest I was, he would take Karl back. 
He’s never had a head-man like Karl. But I’ve 
given up. I have no more hope. If father turns 
me adrift I shall have to go. It’s hard on an 
honest girl to have to disobey her father. But 
Karl and I belong together. It would be a sin for 
me to marry Andreas Klumpp. I’ll stay at home 
and not marry anybody, or I’ll marry Karl. That’s 
the long and short of it. Sometimes I think if 
father wasn’t so very religious he might not be so 
hard. He’s so looked up to in the church, and so 
particular about everything, he thinks he’s always 
sure to be right. He thinks he’s right now, and 


128 


A BATTLE AND A BOY- 


I’m wrong, and he’s prayed a great deal about it. 
That’s why I’m tired and discouraged.” 

“ It’s a pity I’m not grown up yet,” Franzl 
broke out, impetuously. “ I’d like to send them 
all spinning — Andreas Klumpp and Count Bosen, 
and Kurt von Normann after them ! ” 

“ You’d be a terrible fellow, Franzl ! Now I 
have told you how bad it has been, and how I 
wanted you to come and bring me good luck. 
That was only a notion, I suppose, but we’ve been 
good friends, Franzl, from the first day, and if 
I’ve had any pleasure since you came, it has been 
through you, and that’s the truth.” 

She stood silent and thoughtful for some minutes, 
her hand resting affectionately on his shoulder. 

“ It’s late, very late, Franzl,” she said, at length. 
“ Go to bed now.” 

A curious medley ran through his mind. It was 
strange business that all these grown people 
shouldn’t do what they wanted. The differences 
then were only in the words and the picture. In 
the very inside of them, Herr Arno and Friiulein 
Doris were wishing and wishing, quite like Karl 
and Leni. 

“ Oh, if I could only hurry and be a man ! ” he 
exclaimed, vehemently. “ You’d see, Leni ! ” 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


129 


“ I see that yon have a good heart. Good- 
night, Franzl.” 

She had seemed prodigiously wise to the child 
during all this strange talk in the dark. She had 
spoken of things beyond his experience. Perhaps 
she did know after all. With an eager impulse he 
said : 

“ Leni, what is a blesbleege ? ” 

“ Where did you see one ? ” 

“ I didn’t see it. The Normanns talked about 
it." 

“ Perhaps it’s a French vegetable," suggested 
the girl, carelessly. “ Nanni says they call fried 
potatoes pommes f rites. Couldn’t it be something 
of that kind ? ” 

Franzl was motionless for some moments. 

“Never mind,” he said, kindly and brightly; “I 
don’t suppose it is much of anything. And you 
cheer up, Leni. You shall have Karl. There’s no 
mistake about that. Good-night," and he tramped 
off to his hay-bed. 


Yin. 

Near Wynburg was a beautiful river which 
seemed to have been created for the express pur- 
pose of distracting and tempting boys, and making 
them unmindful of their duty. Neither wide nor 
deep, it flowed past pretty suburban towns and 
villages, whose cool, green, shady gardens ran 
down to the water’s edge, over which large trees 
extended rich drooping branches. The river was 
a veritable river, possessed of traditional and his- 
toric importance, but at this point in its career it 
acted strangely like an overgrown brook, eddying 
and prancing in a juvenile manner round a couple 
of islands, improvising a few cascades, dashing 
boisterously over some rocks, and tossing its mane 
beneath three bridges — a heavy, broad structure, 
solid as the highway ; an airy suspension railway 
bridge ; and a narrow arched one for foot-passen- 
gers only, and resting lightly on an island before 
spanning the other flood. 

Leaning on the railing of the small arched 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


131 


bridge, one sunny September morning, stood a 
dirty little boy with a basket of new potatoes 
which Leni had told him to take to a certain house 
far beyond the river.. She had also said he was to 
be as prompt as possible, for business was lively 
at the market and she needed him every moment. 
Franzl thought a fellow ought to have more than 
two eyes to see everything that was going on that 
morning. Watching the two shores and the isl- 
ands and the bridges kept him very busy. It was 
like three rings at a circus. There was a glitter- 
ing troop of cavalry winding along one side of the 
river, a tramway-terminus with much backing and 
geeing of heavy horses on the other, besides a 
hurdy-gurdy with a monkey ; the whole world and 
his wife were passing over the big bridge, a drove 
of cattle was approaching it; a train steamed 
slowly across the suspension bridge ; on the nearer 
island flags were flying, a merry-go-round revolved 
indefatigably, and gay tents peeped from the 
foliage, while three swimming-schools, whose dis- 
creet if rough board walls screened the boy- 
bathers, let delighted whoops and yells ascend to 
Franzl’s ears. Directly near him, on the steep 
green bank, a flock of sheep, alarmed by the shriek 
of the locomotive, had lost their leader and their 


132 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


silly heads, and were plunging distractedly toward 
the water, instead of filing respectably along the 
path that led to Franzl’s bridge. An angry man 
and a giggling boy sought to collect the scattered 
animals, whose panic and consistent foolishness 
made so delectable a sight it would have glued the 
very elect to the spot. A gale of laughter over- 
came Franzl. He put down his basket, held his 
sides, and tears ran down his cheeks. 

If things had not been so attractive to his curi- 
ous, alert young spirit, if the sun had not sparkled 
so on the water, if everybody had not seemed to be 
enjoying himself, if there had not been a merry-go- 
round grinding out the “ Beggar Student ” waltz 
in the most discordant yet imperatively inviting 
manner — while the river was the best merry-go- 
round of all — if he had not heard those boys 
splashing and shrieking behind those tantalizing 
boards, if — if — Mr. William Shakespeare says 
there’s “ much virtue in an if ” — if, in short, Franzl 
had been a good little boy of a sober and plodding 
temperament, with ears and eyes wisely but not too 
well open, or if he had been a certain kind of child 
of stoic, Sunday-school-book mould, who would 
have felt, but with heroic virtue resisted, these 
allurements, certain events which followed might 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


133 


have been altogether different — in fact, might have 
proved far less comfortable and happy for all con- 
cerned. 

The horsemen passed, the train went out of 
sight, the sheep recovered their proper state of 
docile irresponsibility, and Franzl reluctantly took 
up his basket and trudged on. His cheeks were 
glowing hot. He had baked so long in the sun- 
shine, it seemed to him he was never so warm in 
his life. When he looked at all that water, he felt 
that no boy on earth had ever been so warm as he 
at the moment. The maddening voices of those 
cool river-urchins followed him as he turned down 
a long, dusty, sultry street, and left all pleasing 
sights and sounds behind. 

Having delivered his potatoes, he retraced his 
steps slowly, meditating upon many things which 
a stern moralist would scarcely have pronounced 
edifying. Reaching the river, he without hesita- 
tion turned up the shore-road instead of crossing 
the bridge which led to the city, his duty, and pa- 
tient Leni waiting for the truant. The boys’ voices 
ceased to irritate him, and induced merely a re- 
sponsive and expectant smile. “You just wait, 
you fellows ! ” was the language of his whole per- 
sonality. When he met an old woman, he wiped 


134 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


his face on his sleeve in an airy and negligent 
manner. As he passed some men talking busily, 
without a glance at him, he looked the other way 
and whistled very loud. He also stared somewhat 
defiahtly at a group of little girls playing with dolls 
under a tree. 

But no one knew him, nobody stopped him ; 
there was nothing whatever to turn him from the 
course which he had undertaken ; and it must be 
admitted that, being a resolute nature, after he 
had once made up his mind to backslide, he back- 
slid with great rapidity and aplomb. Farther and 
farther he strayed from the path of rectitude, fol- 
lowing the shore, soon leaving the little town be- 
hind and finding green country ways — a meadow 
belted with poplars, and the river-bank thick with 
alders and willows. The dense shrubbery was 
what he sought, since he had no pfennigs for a 
dressing-room and bathing-gear, like those opulent 
fellows down by the island. But little cared he 
for that, as he quickly left clothes and basket un- 
der a bush, and plunged into the tempting depths 
with a rapturous sense of freedom and power, as 
if he could ride the crest of a wave as well as any 
Triton of them all. 

His enjoyment was vast, and unruffled by the 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


135 


faintest breath of self-reproach. His conscience 
for the moment was dormant. This water was what 
he had craved, and now that he had it, he basked 
and revelled and gloried in it, from the crown of 
his head to the tips of his toes. After some time 
devoted to purely physical enjoyment, an infinite 
variety of dolphin tricks, lazy self-communion, and 
the agreeable discovery that he had gained wind, 
strength, and stroke, he deigned to cast his eyes 
upon the world of which he had been utterly ob- 
livious. 

At some distance beyond his bush dressing- 
room, the shore curved gently toward lawns and 
villas, while across the little cove stood an old 
brown building which looked like a mill. It was 
the Water House of which he had heard some talk 
at the market. It served to regulate and control 
the supply of water for the mills, and was also im- 
mortalized in scliool-girl drawing-books, budding 
talent sketching from nature being often conducted 
to this picturesque spot. The stream near it had 
the reputation of treacherous currents and eddies, 
and was a dangerous and unlucky place for swim- 
mers, which prudent children should avoid ; but 
proud experts occasionally sought its whirling 
waters. Franzl, peering about in every direction, 


136 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


thought it would be a fine thing to go up and swim 
in the “ Whirlpool,” and then brag of it. Inspired 
by this lofty motive, he struck out toward the 
Water House. Swimming into the cove, he pres- 
ently perceived two or three boys walking on logs 
which, loosely bound together, made an insecure 
floor far out over the water. On the shore a little 
girl was hopping frantically about, and calling to 
them to come back. He would have recognized 
the motions, even without the voice, as Hildegard 
Normann’s, and instantly, with the consciousness 
of Kurt’s presence, Franzl’s intense joy in his es- 
capade was dead and gone. The water might have 
been sawdust for all the pleasure it gave him. He 
watched the boys greedily, the old tormenting 
thoughts reborn in his heart, as he saw Kurt ad- 
vancing, laughing, chattering, boasting, pushing, 
being pushed, and calling teasing replies to the 
frightened little girl on shore. Franzl determined 
to swim nearer, “ show off,” and do some things 
Kurt couldn’t for the life of him. 

The boys in high glee grew more reckless every 
moment. Kurt was on a nearly detached log, dar- 
ing the others to follow, and announcing mockingly 
that nobody was so sure-footed and cool-headed as 
he. Thus taunted, one of his friends stepped on 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


137 


the other end, the log bobbed, pitched, rolled, and 
precipitated both boys into the water. Hildegard 
screamed, Franzl laughed with malicious delight, 
the boys talked all together, one knelt and helped 
his friend, who succeeded in clutching the slippery 
bark and scrambled into safety. He stood a drip- 
ping and discomfited figure, gesticulating, and ex- 
plaining how he had happened to fall. Franzl 
swam nearer, laughing still and thinking it awfully 
good fun. Hildegard, shrieking wildly, had run 
up the bank for help. But where was Kurt? 
Franzl had not seen him rise once. The boys, too, 
were evidently anxious. 

“ Kurt ! ” they cried. “ Kurt, come up ! Don’t 
fool any more ! ” 

The moment Franzl became conscious that there 
was actual danger, he shot forward with all his 
strength and speed to the rescue. He was pos- 
sessed soul and body by the instinct to save a hu- 
man life, his every sense was on the alert. 

“ He’s under the log,” he thought, “ and the 
current is too strong for him and he’s got his 
clothes on.” 

Like a flash he turned and swam some rods 
below the place of the accident, plunged deep, 
swimming under water and under the logs. He 


138 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


saw nothing and came up an instant to the sur- 
face. 

“Oh, haven’t you got him?” cried the fright- 
ened boys. 

Franzl dived again. 

With his blurred under-water vision, he per- 
ceived a big dark, indistinct mass which he with 
a bound approached. He clutched Kurt’s hair 
and then his coat, swam with one arm and dragged 
the heavy weight — how he never knew — but he 
made a desperate effort to remember where the 
logs lay, and not lose his bearings, so that he 
could get to an opening as soon as possible. The 
current was so powerful he had to swim with it, 
and presently saw by the light that they were 
freed from their dangerous prison and could come 
up to the surface. With his last strength he got 
his right arm around Kurt, the other round a log, 
and hung breathless, exhausted, clutching him 
frantically and in mortal terror that he was dead. 
His face was ghastly, his eyes staring, his mouth 
open, his head fell helplessly forward. Eranzl 
kept the poor head above water. Men were al- 
ready gathered on the bank, and several, half- 
stripped, had plunged for the two children. As 
rapidly as they came, it seemed ages to Franzl be- 


A BATTLE AND A DOT. 


139 


fore they removed the cold unconscious body from 
his convulsive embrace. 

The Normanns’ coachman took Kurt in his arms. 

“ The poor boy’s dead,” he exclaimed, as he bore 
him away ; “ quite dead.” 

“ You rub him,” cried Franzl, fiercely. “ Don’t 
you let him be dead ! ” 

“ Here, you brave little fellow, take my hand 
and come up,” said one of the men. 

“ Who are you ? What is Jiis name ? ” asked 
several voices. 

Franzl’s heart was ready to burst with excite- 
ment and fear. Without a word he swam off to 
get rid of the strangers, but not far, for he was 
weak. On the bank, in the sunshine, screened by 
clustering bushes, he stretched himself out and 
grew warm again. Overcome by fatigue he slept, 
how long he did not know, but it was about noon 
he saw by the sun when he a woke. Strengthened, 
but still feeling queer and shaky, he swam down 
the stream to the spot where his little mound of 
personal effects, with the potato-basket as private 
seal on top, stood unmolested. 

Soon he was crossing the bridge upon which he 
had loitered before all this happened. The 
bridge was the same, but its glamour had departed. 


140 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


Nothing had any charm for him. When he 
reached the market, he was relieved to find that 
Leni had gone home. He was so very drowsy 
that after eating a bit of bread, he concluded to 
disappear under a bench where the women would 
not be apt to look for him, and here, concealed also 
by an empty meal-bag, he fell into a long, profound 
sleep, from which he waked refreshed and well. 

All his thoughts were with Kurt. Was he dead ? 
Must he die? When Franzl approached the Nor- 
mann house that evening, his heart beat fast, and 
he could not muster courage to go in and ask 
Nanni what he longed and feared to know. He 
saw a little boy in the park and prevailed upon 
him to run up and ask the cook if the boy that 
had fallen into the water was dead or alive. The 
child went willingly, and Franzl waited, consumed 
by anxiety and dread. 

“ He’s alive. They’ve worked over him all day. 
They thought he was dead. But his mother 
wouldn’t give him up when everybody else thought 
he was gone. The whole family is out there in the 
friend’s house, where his mother was making a 
visit when it happened. They have just tele- 
phoned the cook. She is crying and laughing 
like anything.” 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


141 


Franzl gave the astonished boy a violent shake 
and a hug, and resumed his homeward wa y, tears 
rolling down his cheeks. It was a matter of utter 
indifference to him that some boys hooted and 
called him “ cry-baby.” He experienced no de- 
sire to punch them. 

The long walk quieted his excitement some- 
what, and Leni, in the twilight, perceived noth- 
ing unusual in his manner as he entered the 
kitchen. 

“ Why did you stay away so long ? ” she asked 
coldly, as she gave him his supper. 

“ I went swimming.” 

“ What made you do it, when I said I needed 
you?” 

“ The water made me. It put the old Nick into 
me, Leni.” 

She repressed a smile, hesitated, and finally 
said : 

“ I should have scolded you well if I’d been 
there when you came back to the market. But 
it’s a good many hours since then, and — the first 
time you’ve run off. Don’t do it again.” 

“ Then you’d better not send me over there,” 
he returned, now dwelling with delight on the re- 
membrance of his swim. 


142 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


“ I would rather send you, and give you time 
to go in,” she rejoined, quietly. “ I didn’t say, 
Don’t swim again. I said, Don’t run away again. 
It isn’t business.” 

“ You’re a good one,” he exclaimed, gratefully. 

He found the warm soup comforting, Leni had 
been generous toward his misdemeanor, and Kurt 
was going to have his other face again, not that 
wet, awful one. Altogether things were happy, 
yet he could not help living over that terrible 
strain and pull. 

Presently he said, in a shy, indifferent tone : 

“ There were some other fellows out there.” 

“ Were there ? ” Leni replied, her thoughts else- 
where. 

“ One of them fell off a log.” 

“ Did he ? ” the girl said, mechanically. 

“ I got his head up.” 

“Did you?” 

“Yes, and he’s all right.” 

There was a strong note of exultation in his 
voice, but Leni was not paying attention. 

After a long pause he said : 

“ It isn’t much use to hate people, is it, 
Leni?” 

“I don’t know that I ever really hated any- 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


143 


body,” she returned, with a sigh, “but sometimes 
I don’t like, about as hard as I can.” 

“ Because,” continued the child, “ after you hate 
them you have to unhate them, and then you find 
you’ve been wasting your thoughts.” 


IX. 


Franzl’s desire to see Kurt’s “ old ” face, with its 
supercilious and insolent smile, was so great that 
he entered the Normanns’ courtyard with his full 
cans, a good half-hour earlier than usual. He felt 
extremely sheepish, not in the least from over- 
weening consciousness of heroism, but simply be- 
cause he, for the first time since the day he met 
Kurt, did not approach the house eager to take 
offence and with scowling animosity seated on his 
brow. 

He was therefore astonished beyond measure 
when buxom Nanni hugged and kissed him tu- 
multuously, and Hildegard seized his hands and 
danced up and down and said : “ Oh, dear me, 

oh, dear me, oh, dear me, oh, dear me ! ” as fast as 
her tongue would go, and could think of nothing 
more appropriate to remark. But his discomfort 
increased tenfold when Kurt’s dreaded mamma 
wept over him, and poured incoherent ejacula- 
tions upon him, and Fraulein Doris smiled like an 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


145 


angel and murmured, “Dear little boy! Dear 
Franzl ! ” and finally took liis band and led bim 
along tbe corridor, saying : 

“ Papa wants you. You must come to papa.” 

Tbis was tbe worst of all. Not like a conquer- 
ing hero, but frowning and reluctant, tbe boy en- 
tered the Major’s study and stood with tbe air of 
a culprit before tbe tribunal. 

Tbe tall officer rose from bis chair at tbe writ- 
ing-table, came forward with bis long military step, 
and without a word looked for some moments at 
tbe little figure. 

“ My brave little man ” — tbe voice accustomed 
to command a squadron, was low and unsteady — 
“ you have made me your debtor for life.” Yon 
Normann placed bis bands on Franzl’s shoul- 
ders. 

Tbe boy squirmed and wished be were on tbe 
other side of tbe door, but presently became in- 
terested in tbe major’s long-legged boots. 

“ You risked your life for my beloved son,” tbe 
deep voice went on, “and you have made us a 
glad bouse tbis day, instead of a bouse of mourn- 
ing.” 

Now, Franzl bad not looked at tbe matter in tbis 
light, and tbe close proximity of tbe gentleman, 


146 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


together with the solemnity of his tone, rendered 
the child hopelessly unreceptive of other people’s 
views of his conduct as well as taciturn as to his 
own. Having his chin raised — a procedure which 
he detested — and being forced to bear a long, 
thoughtful scrutiny, he discovered with surprise, 
that in spite of the gray hair, weather-beaten face, 
and the bigness and awfulness of the major, he 
had Fraulein Doris’s gentle questioning gaze. 

“ Such a child,” murmured von Normann, “ and 
such courage ! To think what it is you have done 
for me — restored to me ! To think that you have 
saved my only son’s life ! ” 

“ I got his head up,” Franzl admitted, in a tone 
which from embarrassment sounded sullen. 

“ Got his head up ! You saved him — swam 
with him — pulled him along under those logs, a 
merciful Heaven alone knows how — and Kurt as 
large as you ! ” 

“ Oh, no, I’m bigger,” Franzl broke out, “ and a 
great deal stronger. I could have pulled him out 
if he’d been twice as heavy.” 

A twinkle was visible an instant in the major’s 
eyes. 

“ It was not only your strength,” he said, simply, 
it was ” He hesitated. He had the kindest 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


147 


heart in the world, and a loyal, grateful spirit, and 
was resolved to watch and further this boy’s in- 
terests always ; but the good major entertained 
thoroughly conservative views, and disapproved of 
turning the heads of the lower classes even if they 
did save lives. The boy, it was true, with stur- 
dy unconsciousness of the greatness of his deed, 
seemed to regard it merely as an exhibition of 
muscle. But perhaps he had had praise enough 
for the moment. The women would surely spoil 
him if they could. It would be wisest to find out 
gradually what would be best for him, to study 
his tastes, capabilities, and wishes. Physically, he 
was a beautiful specimen, and no man could have 
evinced a more gallant spirit. It was a respon- 
sibility — a sacred duty to do the right thing for 
him. In the meantime until graver matters should 
be decided, one could give the little fellow a great 
pleasure. 

“ We shall have time to talk of many things 
when we know each other better,” the major said, 
amiably ; “ I am going to look well after you.” 

To Franzl this sounded ominous as well as 
superfluous, since he was perfectly able to look 
after himself. He stared and said nothing. 

“ But tell me some wish of yours, something 


148 


A BATTLE AND A BOY . 


that you want very much ” — the major went on in 
the kindest tone — “ something that I can do at 
once to make this a happy day for you.” 

He waited, smiling indulgently upon the shabby, 
handsome boy, and rather curious to hear his 
reply. 

“ Oh, it’s happy enough. There isn’t anything 
the matter with it,” Franzl answered, unabashed 
now that the major was asking him straight ques- 
tions and not making him feel foolish. 

That gentleman concluded the boy’s apparent 
indifference might be a concession to peasant-eti- 
quette, and waited with benevolent expectation. 

“'Well? What shall it be ? What shall I give 
you?” 

“ Nothing,” Franzl replied, his manner so sim- 
ple, his glance so bold and direct, it was impossi- 
ble to doubt his sincerity. 

“ Nothing? ” repeated the major. 

“ Why, no,” the boy returned, smiling charming- 
ly, for he thought he would have a room like that 
by-and-by, with armor and guns and swords, and a 
big horn crosswise on the wall. 

“But you really must tell me something, my 
dear boy,” urged the major. “Give me the hap- 
piness of doing some trifling service for you to- 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


149 


day. You surely have needs and wants. Every- 
body has. If I should propose this to my boy, he 
would tell me fifty things, I assure you. Don’t 
hesitate. Don’t be shy. Eemember it was my 
darling’s life that you saved. I can never, never 
do enough for you.” 

“I went swimming for fun,” Eranzl remarked 
stolidly. “ They don’t pay you for swimming.” 

“ Good heavens, child,” von Normann ex- 
claimed, not without a trace of impatience at this 
obtuseness or opposition ; “ can’t you understand 
it’s my son’s life we are discussing ? I presume 
you won’t deny that you saved him.” 

“I suppose I did,” Franzl conceded, reflectively, 
“but I’d have gone for anybody else as quick. 
When you see them fall in, and don’t see them 
come up again, you have to go for them, you 
know.” 

Yon Normann gave him a keen glance, turned, 
and walked up and down the room. 

The boy’s gaze followed the stately, martial fig- 
ure with approval. He would have a uniform, 
too, some day, with tight legs, high boots, and all. 

“ Let us be serious,” said the Major. “ I shall 
put some money in the bank for you to-day, for 
one thing.” 


150 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


Franzl looked quite unconcerned. The only 
money which he understood was money that he 
could see, feel, and chink. 

“But we can talk of that later,” the major con- 
tinued, edified to observe that the child evinced 
no desire to occupy himself with so vague and un- 
interesting a subject. 

“ What the deuce of a boy it is ! ” thought von 
Normann. “One can make no headway with 
him.” 

“Now see here. I haven’t much time.” 

“ Neither have I,” returned Franzl, pleasantly. 

The major smiled, put his hands behind him, 
and looked down steadily at his guest. 

Franzl also, very erect, and with his hands be- 
hind him, stood watching with much interest the 
phenomenon of Fraulein Doris’s pleasant eyes 
under bushy gray eyebrows. 

“ The children call you Franzl. Franzl what ? ” 

“ Beiner.” 

“ How old are you ? ” 

“ Twelve in January.” 

“ Tyrolean, as I hear from your accent.” 

“ From Heilig-Kreuz, in the Yenter Thai.” 

“ You have snow enough there, eh ? ” 

“They have more at Yent. The avalanches 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


151 


snow them up there for six or eight months. But 
I could come down in March from Heilig-Kreuz.” 

“ You came down in March ? ” 

“ Why, yes, to the child-market in Ravensburg.” 

“ Not alone ? ” 

“ I started alone — and was alone in the moun- 
tains. Down below sometimes I met people, and 
sometimes I didn’t.” 

“ What is your father ? ” 

“ He was a hunter and guide. He is dead — my 
mother too.” 

“ Ah ! No family, then ? No brothers and 
sisters ? ” 

“ I have a family — a small one.” 

“ But not here.” 

“ No, not yet.” 

“ You are with Christian Lutz ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“ Does he treat you well ? ” 

“ Well enough. But it’s Leni I see most. She 
is good.” 

“ How long do you work a day ? ” 

“ From half-past four in the morning till eight in 
the evening.” 

“ Enough to eat ? ” 

“ Yes.” 


152 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


“ Anything to complain of ? ” 

“No.” 

“ Hm ! ” said the major. 

“ Of course ! ” thought Franzl. “ They always 
have to ‘ Hm ’ at a fellow.” 

“ You are young to pull that cart from Wald- 
heim to Wynburg.” 

“ The older ones don’t pull theirs better.” 

After a moment the major asked : 

“Have you thought what trade you’d like to 
learn?” 

<c I have thought, but haven’t decided yet.” 

“If you’ll decide, I’ll see to the details. I’ll 
get you a good place at once.” 

“ But I like it where I am. I like Leni. Then 
I’m sold till next March. He bought me at the 
child-market.” 

“ But I could buy you on higher terms. I know 
Lutz. You’ll find he’ll sell.” 

“ You can’t sell yourself for a year, and then cut 
it short,” Franzl gravely explained. “ It would be 
like cheating when you measure milk. That isn’t 
business.” 

The major laughed heartily. 

“ You are quite right, Franzl. Your logic beats 
mine every time. Keep your engagement, by all 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


153 


means. And March is not very far off. But don’t 
sell yourself to anybody else before coming to me. 
I promise to pay highest. By the way, what is the 
Bavensburg market-price for a fine little fellow like 
you? ” 

“ Fifty marks,” was the proud reply. “ Only 
very few old boys get more.” 

“Upon my word!” exclaimed the major, ab- 
ruptly ; then again and more vigorously : “ Upon 

my word ! ” but Franzl had no idea what he meant. 

“ Once more and for the last time, there is pos- 
itively nothing that you want? ” 

“ Oh, there are some things I want, but you see 
I am going to get them myself later,” the child re- 
plied, with his brave young voice. 

“ Which means that there is nothing whatever 
you want of me to-day ? ” 

“ Nothing.” 

The major raised his eyebrows and shook his 
head slightly. 

“ Then I wish I was as rich as you, and as inde- 
pendent.” 

The boy was looking critically at a rifle on the 
wall. 

Yon Normann took it down and put it in the 
child’s hands, saying pleasantly : 


154 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


“ It is too long for yon, or you could have it. 
Would you like a small one ? ” 

“ Thank you, no,” Franzl returned, with dignity. 
“I have one of my own at home. It was my 
father’s, and it is quite as long as this one.” 

The major turned to replace the rifle and conceal 
a smile, asked Franzl to wait an instant, and left 
the room. 

“ Doris, my dear,” he said, “ that’s a child after 
my own heart. Sturdy, sound, brave, and proud 
as a Spanish grandee. But peasant pride, you 
know. No sickly longings to rise above his sta- 
tion ; no discontent ; no desire for luxuries. Why, 
my dear girl, would you believe it, I have tried my 
best and I can’t induce him to say he wants any- 
thing whatever ! You must try, Doris. Perhaps 
you will wheedle it out of him. You’d wheedle 
anything out of anybody.” 

“ I’m wheedling a deep wrinkle out of your fore- 
head, papa,” smoothing it with her soft palm. 
“ It’s a very peculiar wrinkle, and always comes 
when you mount your hobby that people should 
be contented in their stations. But I’m glad you 
like Franzl. We would love him whatever he was, 
for what he did yesterday, but he is really a lovely 
boy, papa.” 


A BATTLE AND A BOY . 


155 


“ There is admirable stuff in him, if he doesn’t 
get notions. I don’t want him spoiled in this 
house, you understand.” 

“ Oh, papa, as if you wouldn’t spoil him first of 
all ! As if you hadn’t spoiled all of us ! ” 

“ That’s altogether different. But we’ll talk of 
these things later. Try to gain his confidence and 
help him to think of something he wants. I asked 
him casually, supposing he would answer on the 
instant like any other child. He looks so honest I 
must believe him, yet it is incredible that the little 
rascal has risen above all human wants and de- 
sires. So I’m puzzled and feel like carrying my 
point. No doubt you can do better with him, but 
don’t flatter him, Doris. There is refreshing in- 
tegrity in the boy.” 

“ You wouldn’t accuse me of tampering with it, 
would you, papa, if I should give him a large slice 
of bread-and-butter, spread extra thick with straw- 
berry jam ? ” 

“ I must go,” Franzl said, at once, as father and 
daughter returned to the study. “ I must hurry, or 
I shall be late.” 

“ But you’ll come back ? I want to see you so 
much, and Kurt has asked for you. He’s fallen 
asleep again now.” 


156 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


“ Oh, I can’t. You see I ran away yesterday. 
I can’t again to-day.” 

“ No, we don’t want any deserters,” the major 
said, smiling. “ But what have you to do ? ” 

“ There’s no market. After my rounds I go 
home and work.” 

“ If I make it right with Lutz ? If I say I am 
keeping you ? ” 

Franzl still looked doubtful. 

“ How will he know ? ” 

“ I’ll send my Bursch.” 

Franzl’s eyes sparkled. 

“ A soldier on horseback with a message about 
me?” 

“Yes.” 

“ Will he say it loud, so that all the men will 
hear?” 

“ His voice is powerful,” the major said, sober- 
ly, “ and I will give him special orders to roar.” 

“ And the milk-cart ? ” 

“ Must it go back at once ? ” 

“ Of course,” Franzl returned, instructively. 
“Didn’t you know they wash the cans?” 

“ At least I have always hoped so,” the major 
rejoined, meekly. “He can take it up, I sup- 
pose.” 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


157 


“ A man in uniform with my milk-cart ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

Franzl flushed. 

“ All right. I’ll come.” 

“ When and where shall he meet you ? ” 

“ Here, at eleven.” 

The Bursch and Franzl were both punctual. 
After giving the man some lordly directions, the 
boy went into the house. Doris received him and 
led him at once into her mamma’s dressing-room, 
where Kurt was installed in high state. 

“ Mamma can’t let him out of her sight,” the 
young girl informed him. “She has to look at 
him every instant to see that he is all there. But 
I don’t blame her.” 

The room was slightly darkened ; there was a 
mingling of sweet odors in the air, a profusion of 
rose-color and lace on the bed where Kurt lay — 
“ swaddling clothes,” he disrespectfully called his 
environment. 

“I wouldn’t miss this meeting for w r orlds!” 
whispered Frau von Normann to Doris. 

“ Hullo, Franzl, how are you ? ” said Kurt, with 
a very dreadful leer. 

“ How are you ? ” returned Franzl, with a grin. 

Kurt put out his hand. Franzl took it. 


158 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


“ I say — that ivas a muddle ! ” remarked the in- 
valid ; which was all the speechifying ever made by 
the two upon the subject of Kurt’s danger and 
Franzl’s pluck, or any emotional phase of the acci- 
dent — at least while they were cubs. 

“ Why didn’t you come up ? ” Franzl demanded 
bluntly, after some minutes employed in a satisfy- 
ing stare at Kurt’s face, which had lost not a whit 
of its mocking flexibility. 

“ That’s what I’d like to know myself,” drawled 
Kurt. “ I suppose I must have hit my head on 
the log. Papa thinks so. I don’t remember a 
blessed thing from the moment I fell until I 
opened my eyes in a strange room, and mamma 
was crying all over me.” 

“ I shouldn’t have hit my head,” Franzl as- 
serted, with extreme arrogance ; “ or if I had ” 

“ Oh, come, now ! ” interrupted Kurt, hotly. 
“ I’d just like to know how you’d have helped it.” 

But before Franzl could expound his theories, 
discreet Doris, observing signs of electric disturb- 
ances in the atmosphere, had drawn him out of the 
room, telling him Kurt’s chest still troubled him, 
and talking made him cough. 

Frau von Normann frequently described the 
scene to her chosen friends, and declared that it 


A BATTLE AND A BOY . 


159 


was the most touching thing she ever saw, and it 
was no doubt in her eyes, which were all she had 
to see with. She always beheld her son’s head in 
a nimbus, the radiance of which in this instance 
illumined his little vagabond companion. After 
all, Shakespeare and Goethe could only see with 
their own eyes ; the highest and meanest of us are 
subject to this limitation, and when that formid- 
able person, the critic on the war-path, seeks to 
drive poets and painters all in one direction, he 
betrays a naive egotism, for what he really says 
is : “ Paint your pictures of life as my eyes behold 
it,” and this is something never yet on land or sea ; 
for only a woman in love ever sees with somebody 
else’s eyes — and she not for long. “ Look in thine 
oivn heart and write” said the poet. 

Frau von Normann, furthermore, was at first a 
little annoyed that the facts of the drowning epi- 
sode were not reversed. It would have seemed to 
her more fitting had Kurt saved Franzl. 

Even Sir Walter Scott confessed that he could 
not repeat a story without giving it a new hat and 
cane. Frau von Normann was still more liberal. 
But however she told her tale, the little milk-boy, 
to her secret surprise, invariably received the plau- 
dits and bore off the laurels. She gradually 


160 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


adapted herself to the situation, took Franzl under 
her wing with a graciousness which was exceed- 
ingly discomposing to him, and with the admirable 
mental elasticity of a certain type of mother, per- 
sisted in interpreting the whole episode as a beau- 
tiful tribute to her darling’s lovableness. 

“ Kurt is so noble, so winning,” she declared. 
“Everybody loves him. Think how devotedly 
attached to him that child must have been to 
risk his life for him. Really it shows unusual 
power of appreciation in a boy of his station. 
Darling Kurt ! ” 


X. 

In Doris’s room, Franzl felt uncommonly com- 
fortable. She did not ask him questions like the 
Major, or overpower him with grandeur and lace- 
ruffles like her mamma, but put him in a low 
chair, gave him a large dish of peaches and 
cream, and told him she wanted him to see her 
cat, for he was a very curious cat with most orig- 
inal ways of his own. 

“ Othello ! ” she called. 

A great silver-gray Angora cat stalked majesti- 
cally from the next room. 

“ This is my friend Franzl,” the young girl po- 
litely informed him. 

Franzl laughed incredulously. 

“ Oh, he can’t understand that,” he exclaimed. 

“ Watch him and let him do what he pleases.” 

Othello came directly to Franzl, sniffed boots 
and clothing, stood on his hind-legs with his 
broad soft paws on the boy’s arm, scented him — 
hands, face, and hair — gave him a straight long 


162 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


look in the eyes, turned away, and lay down at 
Doris’s feet. There was no purring, nothing in- 
sinuating or catty, only a clear-headed, cold, and 
dignified inspection of the stranger. 

“ Why, he’s like a dog ! ” Franzl cried. 

“ Indeed, he is in many respects. He will never 
do that again to you. He knows you now. He 
examines every stranger, and has strong likes and 
dislikes. Mamma has some visitors at whose feet 
he springs the moment he sees them. They are 
not very fond of him. He treats others with in- 
difference, and some he likes and welcomes. He 
doesn’t scratch, that is, he scratches Kurt but has 
never scratched me. He has a way of lifting his 
paw, curving it, and striking swiftly and hard 
when he is displeased. He is fond of the odor of 
flowers, particularly violets.” 

“ What else does he do ? ” demanded Franzl, 
eagerly. 

“ He plays hide-and-seek with Kurt and Hilde- 
gard. He eats fine white bread of a particular 
kind for his breakfast and won’t touch any other, 
and he doesn’t like milk. You see he did not 
deign to notice your cream.” 

“ But what does he drink ? ” 

“ Water, and sometimes a little soup.” 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


163 


“ Is lie your own cat ? ” 

“Yes. He belonged to a girl friend of mine, 
and it’s very odd, but he followed me home sev- 
eral times, very solemn, his tail straight up in the 
air like a flag-staff. Finally she gave him to me, 
and although she lives near us, he has never gone 
back once. So you see he is more attached to 
people than to places, and that is more like a dog 
than a cat, isn’t it ? Altogether he is a very re- 
markable animal, aren’t you, Othello ? ” 

“ What is it you call him ? ” 

“Othello.” 

“What’s that?” 

“ He’s a man in a story-book, one of the best 
story-books in the world. He was very kind- 
hearted but jealous. So is my cat. He is jealous 
when I write, and tries to knock away my pen, 
and waves his tail between me and the paper. He 
is jealous when I read, and calmly puts himself be- 
tween me and my book and brushes my face with 
his tail, until I speak to him and pay him what he 
thinks is proper attention. He has a very expres- 
sive tail. His name used to be Peter. He didn’t 
mind at all when I changed it.” 

“ And you didn’t say, ‘ Kitty, Kitty ! ’ just now, 
you only said Othello once.” 


164 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


“ You see,” returned Doris, smiling. “ He is a 
character. Another thing. Look, Franzl.” 

She took a bird-cage from its place at the win- 
dow and put it on the floor. Othello opened his 
eyes lazily, blinked without apparent interest or 
desire, and closed them. The canary paid as lit- 
tle attention to him. 

“ He is often in the room alone with Mignon, 
and could easily put his paw through * the wires, 
but never goes near him.” 

“ Did you ever try him with the bird out of the 
cage ? ” Franzl asked, excitedly. “ Because it 
would be awful fun to see if he goes for him, you 
know. Now, if you should let the bird hop along 
the carpet just in front of Othello’s nose while he’s 
asleep ? ” 

“ It might be fun for you and Othello, but I 
fancy Mignon wouldn’t enjoy it much, and it 
wouldn’t make me very happy. Othello is used to 
the cage, but not to birds hopping before his nose. 
While I admire his wonderfully good breeding, 
and his way of viewing things in the light of pure 
reason, he is very quick and fierce sometimes, and 
I don’t know what wild-beast instinct might tempt 
him to lift that swift paw and slay my poor 
birdie, before he remembered what a fine civilized, 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


165 


genteel cat he had become. Of course, he’d be 
sorry afterward, but that wouldn’t help Mignon or 
me.” 

“No,” Franzl admitted, regretfully, “but it 
would be awfully good fun.” 

Doris smiled and rehung the bird-cage. 

“ What did you call that bird ? ” 

She told him. 

“ Why do you call him that ? ” 

“It’s only French for darling,” she returned, 
carelessly. 

“ Oh, is that all ? ” he said, encouraged ; “ it isn’t 
hard when you know, is it ? ” 

Suddenly he flushed, started, looked excited, un- 
certain, cast a rapid glance at the pictures, at a 
book-case, a writing-table upon which were books 
and papers, at the young girl who was smiling in 
the sweetest, most tranquil way, rearranging some 
. violets in a low dish on the table near her, and re- 
moving a few which Othello had not only smelled 
but chewed. 

“ Oh,” Franzl broke out, “ I wish you’d tell me 
what the great crowd of men coming down the 
middle of the street meant. Kurt was in front 
with yellow gloves. WTiat were they doing ? What 
did that priest, with his arm out and his head 


166 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


thrown back, want ? Why did they whip them- 
selves ? Why were their backs bare and bloody ? 
Why were they so hungry and thin and white, with 
such awful eyes ? ” 

Doris walked a few steps away from him. 

“ Dear little Franzl ! ” she murmured, sooth- 

ingly. 

“ Why did they have that child, all skin and 
bone, on a litter ? Why did they kiss his clothes ? 
Where did they come from ? Where were they go- 
ing? Why were there miles and miles of them 
coming along behind as far as you could see ? ” 

He had risen and approached Doris, until he 
stood close to her, grasping the table, scowling in 
his passionate eagerness, fiery and indomitable 
search shining in his eyes. 

Doris covered his rough brown hands with her 
own. 

“ I don’t know how to tell you quite, dear,” she 
began. 

The child groaned. 

“ Oh,” he cried, desperately, “ not even you ! ” 
his disappointment so intense that she hastened 
to say : 

“You misunderstood, Franzl. I can tell you, 
but perhaps you wouldn’t understand, because 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


167 


there are things that go before and I don’t exactly 
know where to begin.” 

44 I don’t care about the things that go before. 
It’s those men I want to know about,” he said, im- 
periously. 

“ It was a great many hundred years ago — six 
or seven hundred — when those men used to march 
through the streets in Italy.” 

44 Is it true — what you’re saying ? ” 

44 Perfectly. They thought it would please God 
if they whipped their backs until they bled.” 

44 Did it?” 

44 1 cannot believe that it did. But all over the 
earth, at all times, "among all nations, people have 
been trying to find God, trying to please him, try- 
ing to find a way to heaven and life after death ; 
and sometimes they have done very queer things, 
even cruel things, because when a great many men 
get an idea into their heads they want everybody 
else to think exactly as they do, and they’ll fight for 
it and hurt themselves and other people for it, and, 
it’s like a fever. It makes them wild, and they 
think nobody ought to have any way but their way 
of finding God. Is it too hard for you, Franzl ? ” 

44 Oh, I don’t call this very hard. Were they 
hunting for God down that street ? ” 


168 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


He was drawing nearer and nearer. His face 
almost touched hers. His eyes devoured hers. 
His breath was quick and audible. 

She hesitated, considering how she should re- 
attack the subject. 

“No, dear. It’s not quite that. You see, there 
had been wars.” 

“ Keal wars ? Is it true ? ” 

“ Real and terrible wars in a far-off land.” 

“ What were they fighting about ? Did those 
men fight ? ” 

“ Franzl, you must try not to be quite so — quick. 
You want the whole world all at once. The wars 
were about the Holy Land. The Holy Land is in 
the East, where Christ used to live. A great many 
nations sent armies to take the land away from 
the heathen. There were long wars and several 
times — seven or eight wars, and they didn’t ac- 
complish what they undertook. However, the 
nations became acquainted and learned useful 
things from one another, and a great many from 
the enemy too. But afterward there was confu- 
sion everywhere, because these wars had made 
such changes in people’s minds. Besides, when 
the soldiers came home they brought diseases 
with them. There was a terrible plague. There 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


169 


was a famine. Everything was topsy-turvy. 
Then these men that you saw in the picture 
started up. They declared God was angry and 
the only way to please him was to scourge — that 
is, whip the body. Baptism and the sacraments 
were of no use, they said, the only true religion 
was scourging. So they marched through the 
streets scourging themselves, and all the time peo- 
ple joined them — rich and poor — young and old. 
I am afraid I don’t make it very clear to you, 
Franzl? ” 

“ I understand very well,” he said, haughtily. 
“ Fighting isn’t hard to understand. What was 
that priest in front doing ? ” 

“ He was motioning to the people to clear the 
way.” 

“ What were they doing with that little skin-and- 
bone boy with his eyes sunken in ? ” 

“ He was dying, he had scourged himself so. 
He was almost a saint. They were worshipping 
him.” 

Franzl drew a deep breath, as if an enormous 
load had been lifted from him. How much or 
little he understood she had no idea. His face 
cleared, he smiled brilliantly. 

“ Nothing’s hard when you know it,” he re- 


170 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


marked. “But I wouldn’t have been any sucli 
fool. I’d have hit some other fellow’s back. I’d 

have ” He did not finish his mighty boasts 

audibly, but was evidently satisfied with his reflec- 
tions. 

“ One thing more, Franzl. The reason you 
cared about the picture, the reason you have seen 
it so plainly since, is because it is a strong picture. 
If a poor artist had painted it, you would have 
forgotten. But this painter — his name is Marr — 
felt the story and knew how to tell it on canvas 
and make it real ; and that is w T hy the procession 
comes marching down toward one and reaches so 
far behind, and is so moving and alive, and the 
figures are so strong and the faces so strained and 
fierce.” 

“ Did any of them ever get well ? ” 

“ I presume so,” she replied, with an amused 
look. “ But, Franzl, I haven’t told you their 
names. The Flagellants. That is a hard word, 
isn’t it ? ” 

“Words are never hard if you know what 
they mean,” he returned, sententiously. With 
infinite confidence in Doris, and the rattling ease 
acquired by long practice, he suddenly opened 
fire : 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


171 


“ Phyllis in-spe, 

Faun altruistic , 

Incorrigible quid-pro-quo , 

JEschylus catapult , 

Walhalla propensities , 

Bohemian Hindu , 

Scylla Charybdis , 

Encyclopaedia , 

Lupus-in-fabula , 

Ganymede Berserker, 

Blessbleege and ethics. 

What do they mean, please ? ” 

Doris broke into uncontrollable laughter. 

“ O Franzl, Franzl, where did you get that 
rigmarole ? ” 

“ Rigmarole — twenty-one — twenty-one — rigma- 
role,” repeated the boy, mechanically. Then with 
a certain anxiety : 

“ But don’t you know them ? ” 

“ I think so,” she returned, laughing a little still, 
in spite of herself — “ if you’ll say them slower. I 
didn’t quite hear all of them.” 

“ Are they funny words ? ” he asked, solemnly. 

“ Not at all, Franzl. The reason I laugh is 
because it strikes me as funny for a little boy to 


172 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


say them together and all at once. They are very 
good words. I’ll tell yon all I can about them.” 

“ I didn’t hear them all at once,” he explained. 

“No, I presume not. And why did you say 
them so, so — quite in that way ? ” 

“ Oh, I’ve been singing them, you know, going 
up and down the road.” 

“ You dear child ! ” 

“ I was afraid I’d forget, so I hung on to them 
by my teeth. I don’t forget much of anything. 
Sometimes I wish I could, because I can never 
get my thinking done, and it’s tiresome. But I 
thought I might forget these because I only heard 
them a word at a time, so I strung them together 
to keep them.” 

“ Where did you hear them ? ” 

“ Herr Arno said most of them. Herr Hein- 
rich some. When they are Together their talk is 
awful. I thought I’d have to wait till I got big, 
and then I could find them out myself.” 

“ But have you asked no one ? Why didn’t you 
ask Herr Arno ? ” 

“ I did almost — once — but I don’t know him as 
well as I do you and Leni, and he began to sling 
some more at me, so I got discouraged and gave it 
up. And there wasn’t anybody else to ask except 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


173 


Deni — and she’s busy, you know, and she says she 
never minds such nonsense. I suppose that’s the 
way she feels,” he added gallantly, watching 
Doris, with a sudden air of defiance. 

“ I presume it is,” she said, kindly. " How long 
have you stored your words away ? ” 

“ From the day I began with the milk. That 
was in March. Herr Arno said three that very 
morning.” 

“ He would have told you them gladly and far 
better than I can. You must ask him next time. 
He would be pleased to have you ask him any- 
thing. He never dreamed that you listened or 
cared. Now say your words, Franzl — very 
slowly.” 

He said them slowly, loudly, emphatically, some 
right, some wrong, some dislocated almost beyond 
recognition, his eyes fixed earnestly upon hers, 
and she dared not laugh. 

She explained them one by one, as simply and 
briefly as she could. It was no easy task. Franzl’s 
interpolations were rather mirth-provoking, his 
comprehension of what seemed to her difficult 
points sometimes amazed her, while easy things 
were often hopelessly beyond his grasp. Toward 
the Greek gods he manifested considerable hostil- 


174 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


ity and contempt. “ Come now, Fr'aulein Doris,” 
he remarked, shaking his head with an incredulous 
smile, “that isn’t sense — they’ve been lying to 
you.” But his interest was unflagging, his cheeks 
were flushed, his eyes always staring into hers. 

She galloped through ancient and modern times, 
history, geography, poetry, mythology, biography, 
and the dictionary, and paused to take breath, 
wondering what manner of witches-dance she had 
created in the unfortunate child’s brain. 

“ Oh,” said Franzl, “ I like it awfully, I wanted 
it more than anything. All these months they’ve 
been whirling inside my head. Words are awful 
things when they keep at you.” 

“You wanted this more than anything?” she 
exclaimed. “ This ? Only to be told what these 
words mean ? It isn’t possible that this is your 
dearest wish ? ” 

“ I wanted it deep down inside of me. When 
it’s deep inside of you, you can’t talk about it, you 
know. I wanted to know about the men and the 
words. It has been awful.” He gave a long sigh 
of remembrance and relief. 

“ Oh, papa, what a shock is in store for you ! ” 
Doris thought. “ This is your model-child con- 
tented with his present lot.” 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


175 


‘‘Now, ’’said Franzl cheerfully, his mental ap- 
petite unsatiated, “ what is a blessbleege ? ” 

“A what?” 

“A blessbleege! Herr Arno said it to Kurt, 
and Kurt said it himself.” 

She bit her lip. 

“ Ah yes, I see.” 

She looked at him rather hopelessly. How was 
she ever going to explain to this milk-boy the su- 
premely proud motto of her proud old house ? She 
was a girl of modern and liberal ideas. No mouldy 
prejudice impeded her progress, dimmed her sight, 
dwarfed her soul, or restrained her loving, helpful 
hand, nevertheless she cared for the family motto. 
While she had no overweening vanity in her long 
descent, she would rather than not look back upon 
a fine ancestral perspective. The historical dignity 
of the Normanns was interesting to her, nor did it 
seem to her a worthless thing in the present, that 
the race in the past had been, taking it all in 
all, an honorable one. Sometimes she wondered 
if she were too romantic, if the merely picturesque 
element of lineage fascinated her, for she cherished 
an affection for family tradition side by side with 
what her father considered almost revolutionary 
sentiments — a sturdy disregard for social honors 


176 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


and no sympathy with certain belittling rubrics 
which governed the women about her. If it were 
an advantage, a benign influence of which one 
might frankly be glad, to have able, honorable, and 
well-bred parents, then why not also be honestly 
thankful that one’s grand-parents, great-grand-par- 
ents, and more remote progenitors were also hon- 
orable? It was certainly pleasanter and more 
promising than if they had been criminals. It 
seemed to her that this was a sensible way of re- 
garding it, and she wished, for her part, that the 
whole world were so educated that each soul, not 
now able to look back upon satisfactory ancestors, 
could at least make himself worthy of becoming 
the noble ancestor of a future line. Aristocracy 
of mind and character — when all should reach 
it, all would be noble. As to the motto — she 
loved it. It meant much to her, as it had to the 
men and women of the race for centuries. In 
the family annals were brave tales how they had 
died for the indefinable spirit of their noblesse 
oblige. 

Many such thoughts flitted through her mind. 
Yet, what should she say to Franzl ? How could 
the baroness accentuate her privileges before this 
child destitute of all of them ? How could she, 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


w 


under liis trustful, unfaltering gaze, expatiate upon 
worldly distinctions, and the dignity and virtues of 
hereditary nobility? It would be insolence and 
fatuity. 

Suddenly a lovely smile from her very heart 
played over her face. Of what, then, was this child 
destitute ? What had his brave soul prompted but 
yesterday? What did she prize in the whole an- 
cestral vista, if not the resolute spirit, the loyal 
heart, the clear brain? How was any of them 
nobler than this poor little, untaught boy ? Out 
of his beautiful ardent eyes, his spirit pleaded for 
enlightenment, for truth. Without traditions, or 
motto, or race, or rank, or any moral aid in his 
surroundings, he had done the high-hearted deed 
which made the milk-boy brevet chevalier. A 
long-dead Normann was promoted for extraordi- 
nary bravery on the field of battle. Wounded and 
against heavy odds, he saved the life of his friend. 
He did not reason or know why. Nor did Franzl. 
And they were equal — brothers in soul-rank; 
what other nobility was worth anything, or had 
any right to exist ? 

“Ah, Franzl,” she said, her voice sweet and 
moved : “ noblesse oblige means different things at 
different times, but always that the more one has, 


178 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


the more one must give — that one has not one’s 
gifts for one’s self. Sometimes it means one must 
give love, sometimes courtesy, or silence, or 
speech, or work, or forgiveness, or patience, or 
strength — it is often indeed the thing that is 
hardest to give — but whatever it may be, one gives 
because one must, since one has received so large 
gifts one’s self. And the most precious thing a 
man can give is his life, and that is what you 
were ready to give yesterday, because noblesse oblige 
was in your heart, although you did not know or 
think. You had more courage, more strength, 
more skill, more brain than the others — that is 
why you gave of them all. You were pitiful and 
generous, that is why you could not see Kurt 
drown before your eyes without risking your life 
to save him. And now you know what noblesse 
oblige means, Franzl.” 

Once more came his long-drawn, satisfied sigh. 
He had gradually pressed against her knee, was in 
her face and eyes, and almost down her throat. He 
was far from clean, and smelled of stables and bu- 
colic things generally; but Doris loved him and 
thought him beautiful with the unfathomable clear- 
ness of his gaze, and now and then a flashing 
glance that startled her, it was so keen and domi- 


A BATTLE AND A BOY, \ 


179 


nant, so out of place on the roundness of his pretty 
brown face. 

“ It’s more comfortable when you know things. 
I like it awfully — your talk. But,” he added, with 
a little explanatory air, a touch of masculine su- 
periority and knowledge of facts — “ I didn’t do all 
those things you said. I didn’t blessbleege a 
minute. There isn’t any time, when a fellow is 
under water. I only went for him. You would 
yourself, if you’d seen him go down and not seen 
him come up again.” 


XL 

“ You leave the boy to me,” said the major, ora- 
cularly. 

“ But, papa,” complained Hildegard, “ between 
you and Doris I shan’t have him at all. The other 
day she kept him so long, I really almost listened 
at the key-hole.” 

Kurt laughed derisively. 

“ Almost ! I say ! If 4 almost ’ means being 
doubled up with your ear so close I could have 
shot a pea straight into it from the other side of 
the door, then I don’t know what ‘ quite ’ means.” 

“ Be quiet, children,” said Doris. “ Kurt, don’t 
tease.” 

“ You leave that boy to me,” repeated the major, 
ignoring the intermezzo, and nodding his head 
with decision and benevolent intentions. 

“ I think,” Frau von Normann remarked, “ that 
the kindest thing we can do is to let him play with 
Kurt now and then, on a Saturday afternoon. It 
will be a refining influence, and ” 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


181 


At this moment Hildegard, incited by one of her 
brother’s most satanic facial contortions, choked 
violently and had to be sent from the table. 

“ Isn’t she very noisy? ” the major asked, with a 
helpless expression. “ It seems to me she’s always 
doing something.” 

“ I made her laugh, papa. She goes off with a 
look, you know.” 

“ If you call that fiendish thing a look, Kurt,” 
Doris said, in an undertone. 

“ Don’t lecture him, Doris, remember he’s not 
yet fully recovered,” urged his mamma. “ Kurt, 
darling, you’d better go. You’ll be late at your 
drawing.” 

“ It is a great responsibility,” the major went on, 
“ our conduct to that boy. The fact that we like 
him personally does not simplify matters, it com- 
plicates them. It increases the danger of spoiling 
him. He is a bright, handsome, manly little fellow. 
I grant that he has become a part of us, of our 
thoughts and conscience, of our lives, and that we 
can never to the end of our days fail to consider 
his interests. Precisely for these reasons, I say 
leave him to me. Unless you want to ruin his 
future, want to make him a discontented, miserable 
hobbledehoy, neither honest peasant nor honest 


182 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


anything else, don’t flatter him, don’t rouse long- 
ings for the impossible in him, don’t weaken and 
confuse him, leave him where he is and where he 
belongs. Trust me a little in this matter, Doris. 
I’ve seen enough misery made by injudicious be- 
nevolence. Your sentiment and theories get the 
better of your judgment. I tell you simply I am 
Franzl’s friend.” 

“ He couldn’t have a better friend on earth,” 
Doris rejoined, affectionately. “ Only, papa, I 
really don’t think you or anybody else can stop 
him.” 

“ Stop him ? Stop him ? Pray, who wants to 
stop him ? ” 

“I am sure, Doris, your papa intends to do 
everything for him in the most generous way, and 
in whichever direction he manifests taste and abil- 
ity. Nothing could be kinder or wiser than your 
papa’s plans.” 

“ But I do not propose to go so fast that the 
boy’s head will be turned.” 

“ If I could show you how he felt that day, papa. 
He was quite at his ease, I am sure, yet he only 
wanted to find out the meaning of things. I told 
you, but ” 

“ But you and I don’t regard it in the same 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


183 


light, my dear. I presume it was like fortune-tell- 
ing — a kind of reflex action. I have always found 
that when clairvoyants, chiromancers, and all other 
old witches tell silly people marvellous things, the 
data have been skilfully extracted from the prey.” 

He laughed indulgently. 

“ No, papa, I suggested nothing. It was all his 
own self — his initiative ; and he cared — I cannot 
tell you how intensely he cared. He was passion- 
ately eager.” 

“ My dear child ! When was a bright boy not 
curious? Curiosity is a dominant characteristic 
of childhood. I see nothing phenomenal in him. 
I observe with pleasure that he has exceptional 
simplicity and sturdiness. It is a healthy sign, 
and I like his want of greed, his all-pervading con- 
tent.” 

“ Oh, papa, papa ! ” 

“ Yes, my dear, that is it. A child who cannot 
be induced to mention one single thing that he 
wants, who evidently wants nothing, is contented. 
Diogenes in his tub couldn’t surpass him. And I 
say roundly, whoever makes him discontented does 
him unspeakable harm. Whoever wisely aids him, 
not dragging him out of his own station, but help- 
ing him to become a good peasant-farmer, a good 


184 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


master-workman, a good corporal, if you will, is 
his friend.” 

“ How dare one say to any human spirit, 4 Thus 
far and no farther ? ’ ” murmured the girl, thought- 
fully. 

“ I have said nothing of the kind,” returned the 
major, dryly. “ I’ve made no remarks whatever 
to Franzl’s spirit. I am merely regarding the 
matter from a sober and practical point of view. 
The problem is : how shall we best help a healthy, 
hearty milk-boy to become an honest and happy 
man ? ” 

“ A milk-boy who has proved himself a hero ! ” 

“ Precisely. Why not ? Are there not heroes 
in the ranks ? But personal bravery is not suffi- 
cient cause to make a field-marshal out of a pri- 
vate. There must be privates, and small farmers, 
and day-laborers, and all parts of the social 
machine. Brave ? Of course they are brave. Do 
I underrate them ? The braver they are the bet- 
ter for the nation, which needs true men in all 
classes. But it will be cruelty, not kindness, to 
make that boy something for which he was not 
meant. Wliat is success, at best, for any of us ? 
The sum total of a series of well-concealed fail- 
ures. There’s scarcely an ambitious man that 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


185 


doesn’t have to acknowledge to himself, after a life- 
time of striving, that the game wasn’t worth the 
candle. You leave that boy to me. He shall 
struggle with tools or the stubborn earth as he 
will, but not with ideas if I can help it. Ideas 
are fatal to a man such as he will be. They’ll 
make a vulgar agitator of him. Don’t rouse his 
ambition, which would be in his case but another 
name for vanity. Let him remain simple and un- 
spoiled. Don’t modernize him. Don’t pervert 
him. I mean well by the boy. I know what I’m 
talking about.” 

“ It is the old question, papa,” she said, gently. 
“ We have discussed it so many times.” 

“ Yes, in general. Never before with a boy’s 
future in the scales.” 

“ Of course, Dorjs, you will agree to think as 
your papa does.” 

Doris laughed, went over to her father, stood 
behind his chair, and kissed the middle of his 
bald spot. 

“ Papa and I understand each other very well.” 
She put her arms round his neck, her chin on the 
top of his head. 

“ That may be,” he grumbled, “ but if my 
squadron were as badly drilled and insubordinate 


186 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


as my home regiment, I should be cashiered. 
Will you or will you not leave that boy to me, 
Doris ? Come around where I can see you.” 

“ May I answer his questions ? ” 

“ I have not the least objection. It is not his 
head I fear, it is yours.” 

“ Ah ! ” 

“ You may go out to the farm, have him here, 
make him feel free and comfortable with us all. 
The more strongly he believes we are his friends, 
the better I shall like it. I simply beg you to re- 
frain from any attempt to change the current of 
his ideas.” 

“Oh!” 

“ Am I to interpret your ‘ Ohs ! ’ and ‘ Alls ! ’ 
and wise prophetic looks, and amused eyes and 
little impertinent smiles as assent to my request ? ” 

“ I agree to refrain from any conscious attempt 
to change the current of Franzl’s ideas. Mean- 
while I understand that I am permitted to answer 
any questions that he may ask me,” she said, de- 
murely. 

“Conscious attempt? What does that mean, 
slyboots ? ” 

“ It means that I am very high-principled and 
punctilious in making my contract with you. If 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


187 


Franzl demands explanations of me, how can I an- 
swer for ideas which my words may suggest ? ” 

He laughed good-humoredly. 

“ Be tranquil upon that point. The boy’s imag- 
ination is not so inflammable as you think.” 

“ May I give him books ? For instance, ‘ Greek 
Heroes,’ which he has at present ? ” 

“ Oh, fairy tales won’t turn him into an anar- 
chist.” 

“ That’s your risk. Then it’s a bargain. But 
for how long ? ” 

“What ? Must I set limits to my experiment? ” 

“I should think it would be fair. Because, 
papa, when you admit that you have failed, then it 
is my turn, isn’t it ? ” 

“ Yery good. When I admit that.” 

“ Does a man ever admit that he has made a 
mistake, mamma ? 

“ I think not, dear. When we make mistakes 
they explain them to us. When they make mis- 
takes, we are expected to ignore.” 

“ Come, come, I’ll promise to be honest. But 
you’ll have to wait some time for my recantation,” 
he added with a chuckle. 

“ Your papa is right about the boy, Doris. It 
would be disastrous should you interfere.” 


188 


A BATTLE AND A DOT. 


“ But I have promised not to interfere, mamma. 
I shall merely wait.” 

“ Papa,” began Hildegard, who had stolen into 
the room, ashamed of her explosive exit, “ every- 
body is talking about Franzl and nobody lets me 
speak, and I’ve thought of something perfectly 
splendid.” 

“ That’s right, my darling. Out with your 
scheme. I don’t doubt it’s better than your sis- 
ter’s. It is evident that we, one and all, wish to 
pilot Franzl. Now, what’s your idea, Hilde- 
gard?” 

“ Franzl won’t say what he wants, you know ; 
and you are going to the manoeuvre, you know ; 
and when you come home it will be almost Christ- 
mas, you know ; and if you would let him have 
three wishes for Christmas, you know, he would 
have time to think, you know; and everybody 
wants something at Christmas, you know, and that 
would be splendid ” 

“ You know ! ” concluded the major, putting his 
arm around her. “ That sounds like the legitimate 
drama, Hildegard. You want me to play fairy- 
godmother, don’t you ? ” 

“ Yes, and I’ll tell him what he wants.” 

“ Child, child, you too ! That’s exactly what 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


189 


you’ll not do. How you all want to unfranzl 
Franzl ! Even this baby is a woman at heart, and 
intends to lead him a pretty dance. But if you’ll 
not tell him what to wish, I have nothing against 
your little comedy. I should greatly like to give 
him a pleasure, and as you say, he’ll surely have 
Christmas wishes.” 

“ Then may I tell him, myself ? ” 

“Yes, and perhaps you’ll succeed better than 
Doris or I. If his wishes are reasonable and in 
my power, he shall have them. I wouldn’t dare 
say as much to you or that rascal Kurt, but 
Franzl’s views are more modest.” 

“ Is it a promise, papa ? ” 

“ It’s a promise, my darling.” 

“ You hear, mamma ! You hear, Doris ! It is a 
promise and it’s my own thought, and I may tell 
Franzl, myself.” 

“But not a hint, remember, otherwise I won’t 
play. I’ll refuse to be godmother.” 

“ No, indeed, papa. I wouldn’t spoil the fun for 
anything.” 

“ Mind, you are not even to question him be- 
forehand.” 

“ Of course not. I’m not half so silly as I act.” 

“ That’s very encouraging, I’m sure, my dear. It 


190 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


would be well for many people if they could say 
the same. Christian Lutz, for instance, although 
‘ silly ’ might not be my choice of words to express 
his animus. I saw him this morning.” 

“Oh, papa, why didn’t you say so before ? ” 
Doris exclaimed. 

“ I wanted to plan the campaign first and crush 
incipient rebellion.” 

“ They crush best who crush last,” she retorted. 

“ Isn’t that silly too, papa ? ” demanded Hilde- 
gard, gravely. 

“ Undoubtedly. It is always silly to be saucy 
to one’s papa. Lutz is a donkey and incapable 
of seeing beyond his own pasture ! He evidently 
didn’t want to talk with me at all, but I plainly in- 
timated I didn’t propose to ride up to Waldheim 
for nothing. I dismounted and kept one of his 
men walking my horse up and down, and Lutz 
finally consented to listen to me, because he saw I 
meant to stay until he did. He wants the boy.” 

“ Everybody wants Eranzl ! ” cried Hildegard, 
jubilant. 

“ I made no suggestion to shorten the boy’s time 
with him. Eranzl himself, with very proper feeling, 
declined that, and aside from the fact that he ought 
to keep his word, I don’t want any sudden trans- 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


191 


planting of him. He must continue to take him- 
self simply, and everything we do must be sober, 
practical, and well considered.” 

“ Do you know sometimes I detest the sober 
and practical,” Doris remarked, with a little shrug, 
“and I don’t think it is always very intelligent 
either.” 

“ It is clever enough for an old-fashioned man 
like me, my dear. Lutz would agree to nothing. I 
told him how strong an interest we feel in Franzl, 
and what he had done for us. Lutz looked gloomy 
and said it was bad for the boy. There is no 
doubt he regards it as a personal misfortune that 
Kurt didn’t drown.” 

“ The wretch ! ” exclaimed Frau von Normann. 

“ I suggested gradually lightening Franzl’s work, 
and proposed an indemnity. Lutz declined, flatly 
declaring nobody in his employ was ill-fed or 
badly used, and Franzl’s work was his affair. He 
evidently wanted no interference.” 

“Peculiar, wasn’t it, papa?” 

“ I told him I had plans for Franzl when his 
time was out. Lutz retorted so had he, and as he 
had taken the trouble and expense of bringing the 
boy up from Ravensburg he had the first claim. I 
assure you I was tolerably curt with the stubborn 


192 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


old fool. He is selfish as sin, and hard as the 
nether millstone. He intends to do with that boy 
precisely as he thinks best, without regard for any 
more enlightened opinion.” 

The major was so absorbed in his narrative that 
he failed to observe his daughter’s eyes and smile. 

“ School is in the bond. Franzl is to go in No- 
vember. Lutz cannot help that, but he would if 
he could. Still he is what they call a strictly 
moral man, and he will keep his word. That sen- 
sible little Leni came out and spoke up like a 
man, and we together, by appealing to his cupidity, 
obtained one concession. Franzl may go to the 
Knabenhort every day, that is, to school in the 
afternoon and then to the Hort from four to seven. 
Leni urged that those last hours of the winter 
days could easily be spared, and I pay well for 
each hour. Fancy the heathen darkness of a man 
in this age of the world, who if he could, would 
prevent a boy from going to school, and condemn 
him to a life not far removed from that of the cat- 
tle he tends.” 

“ It is incredible, papa ! ” Doris said, soberly. 

“ It is shameful, it is barbarous,” returned the 
good major, with righteous indignation. “I do 
not know if Franzl is really valuable to him, or 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


193 


whether the boy’s worth increases in proportion as 
we show interest in him. But one thing is certain. 
Old Lutz is bound to be as disobliging and churl- 
ish as possible, and will do his best to keep the 
child in his clutches after March. However, I’m 
content with the results of my first mission. 
Franzl will go to the Hort, and it will be an excel- 
lent thing for him. If there is a charity that is 
wise, healthful, doing good and harming no one, it 
is this. There he will have a few hours every day 
in a comfortable place, where he’ll get something 
to eat, learn his lessons, then read or draw or carve 
wood, or play games, or do anything he likes. 
And all the time, mind you, he won’t be getting 
notions into his head. Boys of his own class, 
promising boys too, are his companions. At four- 
teen they begin to learn a trade. They will know 
enough and not too much. That’s where Franzl 
belongs, among his peers.” 

“ I agree with you, papa. You cannot please me 
more than by sending him to the Hort — for the 
present.” 

“ I think,” said Frau von Normann, “ if you two 
are going to discuss these things for an indefinite 
time, Hildegard and I will go to drive and call for 
Kurt. The dear boy ought not to walk too much 


194 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


to-day. I may make a few visits too ; I should like 
to hear some interesting conversation,” she added, 
with a slight laugh. “ I am sure I approve of 
philanthropy as much as anyone, but it does get 
very dull, morning, noon, and night. I have lis- 
tened patiently to the chapters upon Franzl and 
Lutz, but if you are now going to discuss the 
Hort, I’d better retire. Why do you never talk of 
people we know? Aren’t our acquaintances fel- 
low-creatures too? Why always these ‘sons of 
the soil?”’ 

“If you make visits this afternoon, my dear,” the 
major replied, smiling and lighting a cigar, “you 
will come home with the most interesting hautes 
nouveautes, and then it will be our turn to listen.” 

“I am flattered that you approve my course, 
Doris,” he resumed. “It is the best place for him. 
It keeps the boys out of mischief. It is human- 
izing, educating, comforting, and ” 

“ Conservative, I suppose you think,” she added, 
with a laugh. 

“ I trust so,” he returned, devoutly. “ The 
director impressed me as a sensible man. I heard 
none of your scatter-brained ideas down there. I 
even went so far as to ask if they ever advance a 
particularly bright boy to a higher school, and I 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


195 


was informed — to my immense satisfaction, my 
dear little revolutionist — that they had invariably 
found such a step a misfortune for the boy.” 

Doris laughed merrily. 

“ Oh, I can hear that benevolent old owl answer- 
ing you. ‘ Certain social prejudices, crystallized 
— as it were — the solidarity of existing relation- 
ships — one might say — the prevailing local ten- 
dencies and inherent idiosyncrasies — so to speak 
— combine to render it inexpedient to distinguish 
one boy beyond his mates — as it were — or make 
him, as one might say — conspicuous.’ ” 

“Witch!” 

“ That’s what he told you, isn’t it ? ” 

“Approximately — yes, and very good sense I 
thought it.” 

“Very good polysyllabic words, good mouth- 
fuls ! ” 

“ Perhaps you’ll like him better when I tell you 
that he knows every boy in the Hort, every face, 
every family. To know nearly a thousand boys 
individually requires special talent. Each even- 
ing he visits one branch, on some days two. He 
is devoted to the boys, and he declares although 
they are from the very dregs of the people, 
coarse enough, unmannerly and rough, he has not 


196 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


yet found one irreclaimably vicious nature, not in 
the four years in which this thing has been in ex- 
istence. He does not know among the hardest 
cases one out-and-out bad fellow.” 

“ I do like him. I think he is goodness itself 
to give so much time and affection to the boys. 
He is always lovely, and it’s only in certain lights 
that he is a lovely old fossil ! ” 

“ How do you know him so well ? ” 

“ I heard him talk to the boys of the St. John 
Hort, when I went down to give them season 
tickets to the swimming school. Then Herr Theo- 
bald has spoken of him.” 

“ Ah ! The director said Theobald came often 
and was in high favor with the boys. He can do 
anything he likes with them.” 

“ Yes, he is kind,” Doris said, coloring slightly. 

“ I am by no means sure that he has been kind 
to me.” The major looked keenly at her. “ I 
presume I have to thank him for a good part of 
your philosophy.” 

“ I think not,” she replied, gravely. “ He made 
some things clearer to me, but he did not set me 
thinking.” 

“ Who did, then ? ” 

“ You, papa.” 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


197 


“ I ? I was that scoundrel ? ” 

“ Yes, you,” she repeated, softly. “ You are so 
sure, so very sure how everything ought to be, 
what people ought to believe in religion, how so- 
ciety should conduct itself, how the poor should 
feel and act, that at first I began to ask how does 
he know, and then to wonder, and then to doubt, 
and then sometimes to think the contrary.” 

“ Is it possible that I am a dogmatic old fool ? ” 
he asked, in honest bewilderment. 

“No, papa, you are a darling,” Doris replied, 
with considerable emotion in her low, loving voice. 
“ You are the dearest, best man in the world, and 
nothing and nobody shall ever come between us, 
you may be sure of that. We may think differ- 
ently sometimes. That’s no matter. Thinking 
isn’t loving. We don’t love differently ; we love 
alike and I love you dearly, and if I cannot always 
do all that you expect of me, at least, I will never 
do anything against your wish, no, not on any ac- 
count, no, not for anybody — ever — ever — ever ! ” 

As she leaned over him, he saw her eyes were 
wet. She stroked his cheek in her caressing fash- 
ion, kissed him warmly, and left the room. 

“ Bless my soul ! ” said the major, staring blank- 
ly at the door which she had closed behind her. 


XII. 


One November afternoon, Franzl, with the air of 
an infuriated bandit, walked into the St. John 
Knabenhort. As in this particular assembly of 
youths, a stormy brow and glaring eyes were the 
rule and not the exception for new-comers, his 
tragic manner caused no panic. The master, hav- 
ing successfully tamed many a fiercer desperado, 
had no misgivings as he motioned him to a seat. 

He had come most reluctantly. At the very 
door, indeed, he had seriously meditated flight, but 
as he had let himself be persuaded by Fraulein 
Doris and Leni and Herr Arno Theobald, and even 
the major in full uniform, to at least go and see 
what a Hort was, he decided he might as well face 
the thing itself as those four persons, in case he 
should run away. Still he did wish they would 
let a fellow alone. With his heart in his boots, 
feeling queer and shy, he gave a tremendous 
knock as if he were Thor with his hammer, and 
entered the cheerful room, dark and terrible like a 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


199 


pirate chieftain, or a Corsican with vendetta in his 
soul. 

It was bad enough to have to go to school with- 
out having to go to another school on top of it. 
They all said it wasn’t a school, but if it wasn’t a 
school, then what sort of a thing was it, that’s what 
he’d like to know, and that’s what he intended to 
find out. Glowering at the world in general, his 
roving glance went on a voyage of discovery. 

His neighbor on the right was a pale, fat, 
dough-faced boy, overgrown, unhealthy, big, and 
young. Franzl nudged him tentatively. The 
child gave him a stupid stare and continued to 
work at an example in simple addition on his slate, 
where he persistently based his calculations upon 
the original hypothesis that five and three are 
nine. Franzl not finding him a foeman worthy of 
his steel, peered curiously over the fat shoulder. 
Spying the 9, he dived at it with a wet and ener- 
getic thumb, making a fine smooch and whispering 
“ Eight, stupid, eight ! ” Looking up, he met the 
quiet smile of the master. 

“That’s queer,” reflected Franzl. “They hit 
you generally for less.” 

He now turned to his neighbor on the left, and 
inspected him as if learning him by heart. He 


200 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


was a child with a hollow breast, claw-like hands, 
and so big a head that Franzl contemplated it on 
all sides with frank amazement. 

The boy turned a pair of brilliant eyes toward 
him and smiled like a girl. Franzl, concluding 
not to nudge him, wondered why he had so many 
veins. He was reading Schiller’s “ Robbers,” and 
on his slate were some algebra examples neatly 
done and wholly unintelligible to his inquisitive 
neighbor. 

As the Knabenhort was nearly as gossippy as 
court society, it was not many days before Franzl 
knew why Artur looked so ill and had so many 
veins, and that he was the cleverest boy in the 
Hort, and had hip disease, and used to be well 
enough until one day, when his drunken mother 
desired to flog him with the end of a rope, he 
being only a very little boy, was wild with fright, 
and. jumped from an open window of a third story. 
When the director heard of him, he had been ly- 
ing six weeks on his back in bed, with his legs 
broken, and every day and all day he was alone 
staring at the ceiling, until his mother, who was 
not always intoxicated and who was very fond of 
him in her sober intervals, came home from her 
work at night. The director brought him a story- 


A BATTLE AND A BOY . 


201 


book, the first he had ever had. He did difficult 
mathematical problems for amusement, and was 
far beyond his age and school in all his lessons. 
An inveterate reader, his taste in literature was 
exclusively for romantic poetry and adventure. 
Whatever was wild, exciting, improbable, replete 
with action and life, in short of things which he 
could never do and scenes most removed from his 
mother’s poor bare room and all that he knew best, 
appealed most strongly to the lame boy. 

Of many boys there, tales akin to Artur’s family 
history could be told and were well known to the 
Director, although not in every instance of al- 
coholic infelicity had an open window presented 
itself before a frightened child, or hip disease ac- 
centuated the catastrophe. Some boys, too, were 
less excitable than Artur, and took their rope-ends 
and other parental diversions stolidly. All in all, 
they were good-looking boys. Some of them had 
the pasty color produced by poor food and bad 
air, many were frail, but others were defiantly rosy, 
and their straight features and intelligent heads 
would not have been amiss in more distinguished 
families than those which produced them. Their 
costumes were rather odd, the little coats, mostly 
philanthropic offerings, were usually too big or 


202 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


too little, inclined to conceal hands, or to expose 
over-much bony adolescent wrists. One boy 
walked proudly about in a long dressing-gown 
buttoned to the throat to conceal the paucity of 
undergarments ; cuffs were not the fashion at the 
Hort, but there was an evident struggle toward 
the collar-ideal. 

The room was warm, brilliantly lighted, a case- 
ment was open, Franzl observed with satisfaction, 
as he hated to be cooped up and had longed to 
break a window-pane in the school-room that after- 
noon. Now and then somebody, after speaking to 
the master, went into the next room. Most of the 
fellows had closed their school-books and put down 
their slates, but Doughface, patient and content, 
was still cogitating upon the conflicting theories 
regarding five and three. Franzl wondered what 
they were doing in the next room. The door was 
open. It looked bright in there and he heard 
voices. They spoke here, too, without reproof 
from the master. Occasionally a little giggle bub- 
bled up for an instant. Franzl had studied the 
walls from ceiling to floor, all the pictures and all 
the pegs, had discovered the boy that giggled, had 
counted the gas-flames, the boys’ noses, and was 
beginning, with a friendly and interested expres- 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


203 


sion to count Artur’s veins, peering for this pur- 
pose close in his face, when a voice said kindly to 
Doughface : 

“You’ll get it, Hans. You have time enough. 
Bemember you got one out all alone last week.” 
“5 + 3 = 8,” he wrote across the top of the slate. 

Franzl, no more given to self-reproach than a 
bear’s cub, could not help observing that the mas- 
ter did not call Hans stupid. 

“Artur, come to me when you have finished 
that. I have a fine book for you and a puzzle. If 
you get it out you will do more than I can.” In an 
undertone which Franzl heard, however. “ When 
you are tired, go into the office. There is no one 
there and you can rest in the arm-chair. I’m going 
your way to-night. Wait for me. I want to see 
your mother.” 

Artur smiled his affectionate lingering smile, 
said he felt very well, seemed on terms of easy 
companionship with the young man, and buried 
his big clever head in his book again. 

“ Come with me, Franzl,” leading the way to 
another room. “ Knock at that window and ask 
the matron what she has for you. *You are 
hungry, of course. I was always hungry at your 


204 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


As Franzl was accustomed to hear Christian 
Lutz assert that boys ate more than they were 
worth, that one boy could eat an honest man out 
of house and home, and that boys were as bad as 
ravening wolves, the master’s tolerance toward the 
cravings of appetite was an agreeable surprise. A 
thick slice of rye bread and butter, and a glass of 
milk disappeared rapidly in this benevolent atmos- 
phere. 

When he returned he was asked : 

“ Have you anything to learn for to-morrow ? ” 

“ No, I did it in school. The sums were awful 
easy. If you know how to reckon milk in your 
head, you know how to do harder ones every day, 
and the teacher read the Bible verse aloud, so I 
know it.” 

“ Then you may do what you like.” 

“What I like?” 

“Certainly.” 

“ May I go home if I want to ? ” 

“ Yes. Or if you like to stay, you may read, 
may go in my room, may learn to draw or carve 
wood, use tools, play games, or exercise in the gym- 
nasium. All that we ask is that you don’t inter- 
fere with other people’s comfort. In my room 
some of the boys are studying still, so that those 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


205 


wlio choose to read are expected to be quiet. But 
if they prefer they can go into the tool-room, where 
it is rather lively, and in the gymnasium they can 
shout to their heart’s content.” 

“ There isn’t any school about here anywhere ? ” 
asked Franzl, a trifle suspicious. 

“ No.” 

“ Haven’t you got a ferule ? ” 

“ There isn’t one in the whole building.” 

“ What do you do when a fellow cuts up ? ” 

“Nothing. We have very little cutting up. 
Why should a fellow cut up when he’s happy and 
amused.” 

“ What would you do if a fellow wouldn’t learn 
his school-lessons here ? ” 

“Nothing. That would entirely concern his 
teacher. We give every boy the chance to study 
comfortably, but we don’t compel him to learn. 
Still he’d be foolish if he didn’t, wouldn’t he ? The 
truth is, the boys do their lessons first as a matter 
of course, and they know them better since they’ve 
had the Hort.” 

“ Wasn’t there ever a fellow who wouldn’t study 
here ? ” persisted Franzl. 

“ Oh, yes, several. One went into the gymna- 
sium every evening for two weeks, and would not 


V 


206 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


so much as look into the other rooms, but after 
that he fell into the ranks.” 

“ What would you have done if he hadn’t ? ” 

“We should have let him dangle on the parallel 
bars till this day.” 

Franzl laughed, much encouraged. 

“ The boys know that we try to make things 
pleasant for them. It is natural they should 
be willing to please us, isn’t it ? It would be a 
pretty mean fellow that would take all he could 
get and give nothing in return, wouldn’t it ? At 
all events I have never found him, that is, after 
one has taken the trouble to explain the situa- 
tion.” 

“Do you like boys ? ” asked Franzl, solemnly. 

“ Yery much.” 

The boy contemplated him a while with a pene- 
trating gaze, and at length said : 

“ May I go into every single room ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Will nobody stop me?” 

“ Certainly not. They will all be glad to see 
you. If you want to know anything, ask one of 
the ushers. By the way, Franzl, I’ve heard a great 
deal of you from some of your friends, and I re- 
member seeing you several times at Herr Tlieo- 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


207 


bald’s. I placed yon between Hans and Artur 
because I knew you to be a kind boy.” 

Franzl’s bold air vanished. He shuffled, in con- 
siderable embarrassment. 

“ They are both ill in very different ways.” 

“ Doughface too ? ” Franzl asked, hastily. 

“Yes, Hans too. They have been unfortunate, 
but they are happy now. They like the Hort. 
Artur is our best singer. You will hear him at 
six. Hans is timid and a little slow. The boys 
like to tease him, and Artur is so small and deli- 
cate they jostle and hurt him unintentionally, 
when they go scuffling through the corridors. 
You look after them both a little, will you? I 
like to keep Artur till the last and take him home, 
when I can.” 

“All right,” Franzl agreed, cheerfully. “TO 
knock any fellow down that touches them.” 

“ Not immediately, please,” Herr Heinrich re- 
turned, smiling, “ and certainly not for an accident ; 
but I give you leave to knock any boy down who 
intentionally mocks Artur’s lameness. I never 
saw but one capable of such cruelty, and I think 
he was sorry and ashamed after I showed him 
what he had done. Now good-by for the present. 
Amuse yourself. Remember you have the right 


208 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


to go everywhere. It all belongs to you if you 
choose to belong to it. You are welcome in every 
room. Don’t be afraid it’s a school. It is more 
like a boy’s club.” 

The bread and butter and Herr Heinrich’s affa- 
bility had softened Franzl’s aggressive mood, and 
he was secretly flattered to have two boys put un- 
der his protection. Still, in spite of the apparent 
harmlessness of his surroundings, his previous ex- 
perience of the relations of boys and men set over 
them in any restraining and superior position, led 
him to suspect an inimical element lurking in am- 
bush, and he determined to thoroughly explore 
the land. Taking Herr Heinrich at his word in 
the most matter-of-fact sense, Franzl examined 
every nook and cranny of the room in which he 
now stood alone. Presently, somewhat to the sur- 
prise of the matron, he climbed through her win- 
dow and began his intelligent survey of the 
kitchen. With a few trenchant inquiries, he as- 
certained its end and aim ; that there were hun- 
dreds of portions of warm milk and bread there 
every morning for children who never got any- 
thing at home before going to school ; that there 
was soup at noon and night, and beef-tea all day 
for invalids, and coflee in great quantities to sup- 


A BATTLE AND A BOY, 


209 


ply the carts some kind people were sending 
about the streets to win men from grog-shops. 
Franzl did not wholly understand the system 
which she explained, but he received agreeable 
impressions of the matron and her domain, which 
he left, as he came, through the window. 

His hands behind him, very grave and method- 
ical, he proceeded on his tour of inspection, pass- 
ing through Herr Heinrich’s room, where that 
young gentleman suppressed a smile at the im- 
portance of the child’s demeanor. 

The usher in the second- room was also amused 
at the vision that appeared on his threshold, and 
that subjected him and every boy and book to a 
long, calm scrutiny before entering. Some of the 
children snickered, but Franzl at the moment was 
master of his fate. He sauntered about, if a move- 
ment so dignified may be called a saunter, ab- 
sorbed in his self-imposed task of verifying Herr 
Heinrich’s statements. They were thus far accu- 
rate. Except a pleasant good-evening, the ushers 
said nothing to him. The boys were studying, 
reading, drawing, as in Herr Heinrich’s room. 
There were shelves of books, and a few pictures 
here and there. 

The next room was devoted exclusively to draw- 


210 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


ing, and the boys who came in here were tanght. 
If they preferred to draw as they pleased, and 
Egyptian perspective to the modern kind, they 
drew elsewhere. Eranzl scrutinized master and 
pupils, plaster-casts and drawings, with his im- 
pressive air of special government-agent, and was 
moved to ask, pointing at a cast : 

“ Who is that man ? ” 

“ That is supposed to be a head of Achilles,” 
the master responded, politely. 

“I know him. He’s in my book.” 

“Do you think you could draw him ? ” 

“Yes,” Eranzl answered, without one modest 
misgiving. “ Perhaps I’ll come in and draw him 
some day,” he added, affably, knowing no reason 
why he couldn’t do what other boys could. 

“ I should be happy to see you,” the master as- 
sured him. 

He watched the boys in the tool-room some time, 
and was persuaded there was a great deal here that 
he could do better than anybody else. In the 
gymnasium he longed to show those fellows his 
jump, but decided to postpone his triumph, for it 
pleased his fancy to regard himself as a critical 
outsider at first and not to commit himself ; be- 
sides, he was conscious of a desire to see what 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


211 


Artur and Hans were doing. Satisfied with his 
investigations, he walked back to Herr Heinrich. 

“ It isn’t a school,” Franzl informed him, judi- 
cially. “ I don’t mind trying it, and I’ll stay in 
your room.” He returned to his place. 

Hans, after being many times helped toward a 
more enlightened belief, had reverted to his 
original theory that 5 and 3 are 9. Franzl, with a 
fatherly air, seized the slate and rubbed out the 
entire tottering mathematical structure. 

“ Here, Doughface,” he said, amiably, “ you just 
do that thing right now. No use being all night 
about it either.” Hans, with his simple docile 
smile began anew, his awkward fingers and dull 
brain guided by his well-meaning, if imperious, 
neighbor. 

Heinrich left them to their own devices. He 
knew that Franzl was won and poor little Hans 
safe, the moment the generous, resolute boy as- 
sumed protectorship. 


XIII. 

With an open book before him, Heinrich sat 
looking at the little fellows, considering them in- 
dividually and wondering where some, in whom he 
could mark change and improvement from month 
to month, almost from day to day, would end. 
After his own day’s work was done he spent three 
hours every evening with the Hort boys, and they 
had become more interesting to him than billiards 
or the club. 

He had appeared on this new field indifferent, 
sceptical, and merely for a few weeks, at the ur- 
gent prayer of his cousin, the director, who could 
not find young men enough, or the right sort of 
men, to interest themselves in his scheme. 

The younger teachers of the gymnasium and all 
the better public schools were, as a class? busy men 
on small pay, who eked out their salaries by pri- 
vate lessons, and had little time and less desire, 
after teaching average boys all day, to devote 
themselves to worse than average boys in the 


A BATTLE AND A DOT. 


213 


Knabenhort. Socially, there were curious difficul- 
ties. A duke may be careless of his worldly posi- 
tion, but a small German official of any description, 
never, and the young stiff-necked pedagogues 
jealously claimed their prerogative to teach boys of 
the better class Greek and Latin. Men from the 
Folk’s School, they asserted, should be summoned 
to struggle with the roughest and most unprofit- 
able little rascals in town. But the Folk’s School 
teachers had these boys all day and trained them 
conscientiously, on the old-fashioned principle of 
“ spare the rod and spoil the child,” as well as 
that invective, hurled at the top of one’s voice at 
a youngster, is the only known method of driving 
vulgar fractions into his head. How could they 
then thrash and scold six hours a day, and at 4 p.m. 
become calm and winning beings, actuated by 
sentiments wholly at variance with their own tra- 
ditions and training? With such problems the 
good old director was greatly puzzled, until the 
novel and bold thought occurred to him that men 
not all day professionally occupied with boys, men 
whose nerves were not weary and irritable, and 
who had not learned to regard the species Small 
Boy as a natural enemy, would be best able to cope 
with the subtle difficulties of the Hort, the chief of 


214 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


which unquestionably was to make the boys like 
it ; for if they did not like it they would not come, 
and that was the end of the matter. School was 
compulsory until they were fourteen, but the 
government did not interfere with their right to 
yell and hoot and fight and run about the worst 
streets and alleys between daylight and dark, and 
hang about dramshops, and inquisitively watch 
the goings-on of their elders — the worst possible 
thing for their soul’s health. 

The director presented his views to the gentle- 
men of the committee, who shook their heads and 
foresaw failure, as gentlemen of committees are apt 
to do when confronted with an innovation, forget- 
ting that last year’s innovation is this year’s habit. 
They were convinced that only the veritable ped- 
agogue could appreciate the earnestness of the 
undertaking and establish proper discipline. But 
they finally agreed to let the director try his ex- 
periment — predestined they declared to failure — 
in one of the eight Horts. 

He succeeded in pressing into the service his 
relative, young Heinrich, an architect just estab- 
lished, whose genius the world had not yet begun 
to recognize to an absorbing degree, and whose 
private income permitted him vagaries. His 


A BATTLE AND A DOT. 


215 


friend Theobald, less blessed in this world’s goods, 
and at their solicitation, a few other young men 
employed in coaching boys for various examina- 
tions, came also when they could. Both had 
proved successful in their new sphere, and the 
Hort was conducted more and more according to 
their ideas, which were not always those of the 
committee, or even of the Director. The entire 
council, for instance, discussed one whole evening 
with much fervor the question of ferule or no fer- 
ule, the majority being of the opinion that it would 
be impossible without it to control youths used to 
whacks from their cradles, at home and at school. 
The young men listened to the arguments pro and 
con with much the same feelings as if the point 
under discussion were, in this nineteenth century, 
whether the sun revolved round the earth or not ; 
and they gained from the debate, if nothing else, 
a stronger realization of the marvellous tenacity of 
prejudice, impeding the action of good heads and 
hearts. But after the wisdom of ages on the sub- 
ject of the depravity of youth and the holy uses of 
chastisement had been exhausted, Arno rose and 
said briefly, that he would not attempt to reply in 
detail to the director and gentlemen of the com- 
mittee, but would merely call their attention to the 


216 


A BATTLE AND A DOT. 


fact that he and his friends were not teachers, or 
men accustomed to beating small boys. They 
were willing to undertake the work at the Hort, 
provided they might be left free to exercise their 
own judgment as to the discipline required. They 
unanimously believed that these boys met with 
sufficient roughness elsewhere, and that the Hort, 
if successful, ought to be a surprise and contrast 
to their daily life ; that, in short, he and his 
friends rejected the ferule. If it were insisted 
upon, they begged to withdraw. 

The gentlemen of the committee shook their 
venerable heads again, differed among themselves, 
and took considerable time to make up their 
minds. They were honest and kind men who gave 
their services and money to the Hort, and each 
heartily desired its good, but if they had not sys- 
tematically disapproved every modern idea, and 
stood firm on their moss-grown platform, they 
would not have been happy or felt that they were 
doing their duty. They had had a goodly amount 
of feruling themselves, they urged, and had thrived 
on it, and lived to be old and respectable. 

“ You had homes as a counteracting influence,” 
Arno retorted. “ These boys have not.” 

“What would you do if a big rowdy boy of 


A BATTLE AND A DOT. 


217 


fourteen should insult you?” asked the director, 
whose kind heart desired peaceful ways, but whose 
traditions led him to base small hope on moral 
suasion with beings whose morals were imper- 
ceptible. 

“ I should probably put him out,” replied Arno, 
“but I require no little polished stick for that 
purpose.” 

As candidates for work at the Hort were scarcely 
to be obtained for love or money, the directors ac- 
cepted the young men upon their own terms. In 
four years no ferule had been used and no rowdy 
boy ejected. Theobald’s and Heinrich’s youthful 
pessimism and Weltsclimerz — which they had fondly 
believed was intellectual — received a powerful 
check in contact with the worst gamins of the city. 
For gradually the conviction took possession of 
the two students of boy-nature, that for the re- 
demption of the world, the next best thing to cast- 
ing the beam out of one’s own eye is helping chil- 
dren to cast the motes out of their eyes. 

So-called charitable work with tough old sinners 
is apt to prove in the long run, even to the most 
perennially sanguine temperament, a weary and 
heart-sickening task. There are too many dragons 
to slay, and when with the best intentions one 


218 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


feeds, encourages and gives to the poor and needy, 
one frequently discovers with dismay that one is 
feeding and strengthening the dragons too. 

But children are the future, children are hope 
and promise incarnate. Children, by the grace of 
God, have the right to receive gifts unquestioning. 
The professional beggar and the professional court- 
ier cringe and lie for small favors, but the child, 
with wide-eyed indifference, deigns to accept love’s 
gift of a flower or a kingdom, and be he of high 
or low degree, has no gratitude in his soul. Why 
should he ? Surely, if he finds himself by no fault 
of his own on this planet, he may justly claim sus- 
tenance, clothing, education, and some pleasure 
too, until able to take care of himself. As to 
gratitude, that is a cultivated attribute, attainable 
by but a few choice spirits — generally indeed 
effervescent — and utterly foreign to childhood, and 
the childish. 

The boys of the Hort marched in, then, and took 
all that they could get, enjoyed themselves, and 
were sturdily and honestly thankless. If there 
was no gratitude, there was also no obsequious- 
ness, and their unconsciousness of obligation had 
its own dignity. They were told the place was 
theirs ; they took possession. Instead of learning 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


219 


their school lessons as before in cold, ill-lighted 
rooms, amid the cries of peevish, ailing babies, and 
the distractions of squalor, quarrelling, oaths, and 
blows — warmth, comfort, quiet, and cleanliness 
were now provided for them. They adapted them- 
selves to the change with the ease with which you 
or I to-morrow would adapt ourselves to the balmy 
influences of an inherited million. Food for their 
stomachs and food for their eager, half-starved 
minds were given them freely. They partook of 
both simply, and as their right. Sometimes the 
visiting clergyman told them they must be humble 
and grateful. It is to be feared they profited lit- 
tle from his exhortations. How could vigorous, 
thoughtless young animals, good-natured enough 
when let alone, fierce when attacked, perceive the 
true meaning of gratitude and humility. 

But they were, after all, quite as humble and 
grateful as Kurt von Normann and his like. That 
favored youth was not apt to shed tears of joy 
over evidences of his parents’ goodness, or to 
thank Providence for his dinner. Why then 
should one expect more delicacy from these little 
fellows ? Why was it not their right to be taken 
care of, and made happy, and trained into honest 
men ? Why, indeed, was it not somebody’s duty to 


220 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


atone as far as possible for the disease and vice, 
and hunger and cold that had hovered over their 
cradles? For all their early years had failed to 
show them of cheerfulness, honesty, and kindly 
refining things. It would really seem that a well- 
dressed, well - fed, well - educated man of easy 
means who presumes to stand before such chil- 
dren and instruct them that their first duty is to 
be humble and grateful, is totally destitute of both 
justice and humor. It would be more to the pur- 
pose if he should take upon his complacent self 
the burden of humility, and beg the children’s 
pardon for his share of their unmerited wrongs 
and the world’s gross neglect. 

The young men learned much of the boys, grew 
to like and believe in them, hence gained new 
faith in human nature and courage for the work 
day by day. There was roughness enough to 
contend against, greed too, and astounding ignor- 
ance, but nothing wholly disheartening. If the 
boys cheated rather skilfully, they were no greater 
adepts in trickiness than other schoolboys, and 
like them were by no means perfidious, hardened 
hypocrites, but responsive to kindness and reason, 
administered in small doses and not in high- 
sounding phrases. The softening influence of the 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


221 


Hort, and the power of that subtle thing esprit de 
corps on all these waifs and strays, exceeded the 
most sanguine anticipations. Whoever expected 
the boys to appreciate the trouble they were giv- 
ing, to be sentimental, or to kneel and kiss their 
benefactors’ hands, were mightily mistaken. But 
whoever reckoned upon their pride appealed to, 
fairly, now for the first time ; upon their gregari- 
ousness ; upon the social instinct of imitation ; 
upon the fact that if you accost the simple child 
of nature civilly the chances are he gives a decent 
answer, and that if you make yourself disagree- 
able, he beats you at your own game ; upon the 
intense satisfaction which children, rich and poor ? 
feel in being treated with deference ; upon their 
natural pleasure in being fed, warmed, clothed, 
and amused ; and upon the affection and good- 
heartedness of the average young boy, if one 
knows how to approach him, was doomed to no 
disappointment. 

Heinrich’s respect for his boys increased with 
his knowledge of them. In retrospective and 
prophetic mood he looked around to-night on 
their bright busy faces, remembering how hope- 
lessly coarse and bad many had seemed the first 
day he saw them. He knew from what dens and 


222 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


holes some had come. He recognized the incal- 
culable force for good in rousing the self-respect 
of the most seemingly depraved child and in not 
curbing his sense of personal freedom, even while 
suggesting the novel thought of the inviolability of 
his neighbor’s rights. There was much which he 
and Arno longed to do which was not yet practica- 
ble. But they worked unwearyingly to impress 
upon these malleable souls that two and two make 
four, not only on their slates but all through nat- 
ure ; a simple but vast fact frequently ignored by 
philanthropists, who in homilies to the poor pre- 
fer to accentuate the virtues of submission and 
content. 

To endeavor to convince the parents of the 
Hort boys that nothing happened without cause, 
in them anymore than anywhere else, would have 
been in vain, for they, while for the most part 
without a breath of real religion or any conception 
of moral effort, were hopelessly imbued with cant, 
and ready enough with pious phrases to support 
their ignorance and superstition. Either the Lord 
was angry with them and punished them, not for 
anything they had done, but from what in a man 
would be called purely personal and arbitrary mo- 
tives — or “ the Lord would provide,” whether they 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


223 


were lazy and profligate or not. Whatever their 
trouble, whatever their transgression, they shifted 
the responsibility upon the Lord’s shoulders, and 
expected Him to step in and make good their 
fatuity and helplessness. That the exercise of 
their intelligence and self-control would not be 
displeasing to the Almighty, did not occur to them. 
If they left a child just beginning to walk, locked 
in a room alone with a lighted kerosene lamp on 
a rickety chair, it was inscrutable Providence 
that tipped over the chair, broke the lamp, and 
burned the child. The father of one of the boys, 
while strongly under the influence of grog, had 
fallen from a scaffolding and been seriously in- 
jured, and Heinrich heard him say it was the 
Lord’s will he should fall. Another man, con- 
victed of three most aggravatedly brutal and cold- 
blooded murders, informed the court that “ he 
would leave it all to the dear Lord.” 

It seemed worth while, then, with no discussion 
of creed or dogma, to try to give the children of 
such parents some sense of personal responsibility, 
and to teach them something of the law of cause 
and effect, not only among the grasses, the flowers, 
and trees, the animal kingdom, the tides, and the 
stars, but in their own physical and spiritual lives. 


224 : 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


It seemed fair to suggest to them, that pain and 
disease did not indicate God’s wrath, but only 
broken laws, and that He had breathed a spark 
of His divine spirit into each of them, that they 
should develop and not smother or stultify it. 

As the boys were summoned to the music-room 
Heinrich observed a little pantomime. Franzl 
piloting Artur among the hurrying coltish throng, 
pushed a boy of threatening size and proximity 
most summarily out of the way, who turned with 
an angry exclamation and uplifted arm, but seeing 
Artur, understood and went quietly on. 

“ Ah,” thought Heinrich, “ if the world would 
stop fighting and begin to take care of the chil- 
dren, it would wake some morning — after ages, it 
may be — and find its prisons empty.” 


XIV. 

The Christmas-tree stood in the Normanns’ 
drawing-room and shone with enchanting effects of 
color, and two hundred tapers already burned half 
down. The mingled odors of the pine and of 
choice roses floated in the warm air. The children 
had given the servants their presents first, pranc- 
ing down the hall with delightfully mysterious 
packages to the group of men and women — includ- 
ing Leni — waiting in joyous expectation scarcely 
less than Hildegard’s. She had presented her 
papa with his slippers, tarnished with some hope- 
less tears and precious drops of her thumb’s blood, 
and spoken the poem which she had learned for 
him, and if there were queer stitches in the one 
gift and queer slips in the other, Doris had come 
to the rescue in both instances, and the little girl 
was triumphant. 

“ Now, papa,” she said, “ every present is given, 
everybody is perfectly terribly happy, and it’s time 
for Franzl’s Three Wishes. Kurt has promised not 


226 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


to tease and interrupt if I’d give him my whole 
box of chocolate.” 

“ How could you be such a pig, Kurt ? ” Doris 
exclaimed. 

“ Chocolate makes her stomach ache,” he an- 
swered, indistinctly, his mouth full. 

“ And your own ? ” inquired his father. 

“ Oh, mine aches anyhow on the day after 
Christmas.” He retired to a corner with his fatal- 
ism, his goodies, and one of his new books. 

“ Why shouldn’t the dear child have a little 
freedom on Christmas Eve ? ” urged Erau von Nor- 
mann. 

“ Since the robber-knight is gorging himself, the 
moment seems propitious,” remarked the major. 
“ Let Franzl tell me what he wants.” 

“ Not tell you what he wants, papa,” remon- 
strated Hildegard. “ Anybody can do that. You 
promised he should have Three Wishes. That’s 
quite another thing, don’t you know that ? ” 

“Yes, yes, my dear. I’ll try to appreciate the 
•difference.” 

“ Oh, I do hope he’s got good ones. I always 
thought they were stupid in the fairy-books. Do 
you know what I’d have said for my first wish ? 
‘ I wish that all my wishes would come true ? ’ ” 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


227 


“But then there would have been no more 
fairy tale,” suggested Doris. “ You would have 
stopped it short. No more wishes — no more mis- 
takes — no more happiness, no more story.” 

Hildegard looked puzzled. 

“ Oh— but — you see— I didn’t think of that — 
and if I’d been in the story I’d have wished it to 
keep on forever — and — oh, dear me — Doris, you’ve 
mixed me all up ! ” 

“ The philosophy of this discussion is too much 
for Hildegard and me. It doesn’t make us happy. 
Leave us a few illusions, Doris. Bring on Franzl. 
Where is the boy ? ” 

“ Showing his presents to Leni.” 

Hildegard danced down the hall and led him 
back, books under one arm, warm woollen things 
under the other, a noisy little clock in his hand, 
rapture on his face, and a large prune in his mouth, 
its brown decorations visible about his lips. 

“ Now, Franzl, what can I do for you ? ” the 
major asked, in an off-hand fashion. 

u Oh, papa, that’s not right,” urged Hildegard, 
much distressed. “ You must make a speech and 
everybody must be still — even mamma.” 

“ You see, Hildegard,” said a muffled voice from 
the comer, “ I’m not the only one that spoils your 


228 


A BATTLE AND A EOT. 


circus. You’ll have to bribe them all, and you’d 
better hurry. The chocolates are more than half 
gone.” 

“ I forgot, dear. I’ll try to be more imposing,” 
the major assured his little daughter. 

“ Franzl,” she whispered, “ put down those 
things and wipe your face, won’t you ? ” 

With evident reluctance, he deposited his treas- 
ures on the floor near him and rubbed his sleeve 
across his mouth. 

Hildegard with her own handkerchief completed 
the ceremony, and pulled him to the spot on the 
carpet where it seemed to her he ought to stand, 
dancing about him and giving him little approving 
touches and pats. 

Doris induced silence in the family group, and 
the servants drew nearer. 

The major rose and said, as gravely as possible : 

“I have the honor to officiate as fairy-god- 
mother this evening in response to the prayer of a 
little person for whom I entertain feelings of 
deepest affection, as well as profound respect for 
her gentle thought of others.” 

“ That’s it ! That’s the way ! ” whispered Hil- 
degard, pulling his coat-tails encouragingly. 

“ And I wish that my son and heir, who is stuff- 


A BATTLE AND A DOT. 


229 


ing himself in the corner, were half as unselfish as 
she.” 

Kurt gave a malicious and chocolate-y gurgle : 

“Don’t mind me, papa. You’ll get off the 
track.” 

“ No, don’t mind him,” whispered Hildegard, 
anxiously. 

The major resumed : 

“ It is then at the request of my daughter Hil- 
degard that I have agreed to grant Franzl three 
wishes — provided they are reasonable and in my 
power. But if the method is hers, I may well add 
that nothing could give me more pleasure than to 
grant him the dearest wish of his heart. For he 
has given me and mine our dear boy’s life, and 
our boy is unspeakably precious to us, and ” — 
meeting the glance of Kurt’s wicked, satirical eye 
— “ and — and — a great deal better fellow than he 
looks to-night, at all events ! ” 

“ Hear, hear, hurrah ! ” called Kurt. 

“ Sh — h ! ” said Hildegard. 

“I must express my appreciation not only of 
Franzl’s courage and manliness, but also of his 
modesty, good sense, and ” — looking pointedly 
into the corner — “ his complete absence of greed. 
Few boys could or would have waited three 


230 


A BATTLE AND A BOY . 


months, knowing I was ready any day to gladly do 
anything in my power for them.” 

“ I know one that wouldn’t,” mumbled Kurt. 

“Now, in order to make this ceremony long 
enough and impressive enough to satisfy Hilde- 
gard’s severely classic and critical taste, permit me 
to inquire if your wishes are in good running 
order, Franzl? Have you prepared your part 
of the entertainment ? ” 

“ Not quite right, papa. It sounds almost as 
if you were making fun,” expostulated the little 
voice at his elbow. 

“ I’ve got two of them ready,” Franzl replied, 
promptly. 

“Two?” 

“I don’t think of anything else.” 

“ You are an odd boy ! ” 

“ Oh, I say, will you trade the third one?” 
Kurt proposed. “ I’ll give you my sled for it — for 
half of it.” 

“ I’ve got a sled,” returned Franzl, majestically. 

“ What kind of a one ! ” sneered Kurt. “ An 
old box. Mine’s a double runner.” 

“ O papa, tell Kurt to be still. He promised. 
He doesn’t belong in this at all.” 

“Kurt, you devote yourself to your own peculiar 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


231 


joys. You can have no mortgage on Franzl’s 
wish, or play in Hilclegard’s theatre. You say 
that you are ready to tell me two wishes, then, 
Franzl. For form’s sake merely, because Hilde- 
gard likes me to be dignified, not because I doubt 
you an instant, no one has suggested either or any 
part of them to you, and you have mentioned them 
to none ? ” 

“Nobody knows anything that I’m going to 
say,” Franzl declared, gleefully. 

“ Then, my dear boy, don’t keep us any longer 
in suspense. What is your first wish ? ” 

The major was conscious of not a little curiosity. 
Hildegard, one flutter of excitement, would have 
been best pleased had Franzl asked for a horse 
with wings or a cap to make him invisible. Frau 
von Normann, Doris, the guests, the servants in 
the background, all fixed amused expectant eyes on 
the child, while Kurt, with a superior man-of-the- 
world smile, thought that if he were in Franzl’s 
shoes he’d make their hair stand on end. 

Franzl stood by the tree and faced the room in 
a state of rapturous and boundless excitement, not 
in the least on account of the wishes — he knew 
very clearly what he had to say — but because of 
the joy of this wonderful Christmas, of the beau- 


232 


A BATTLE AND A BOY . 


tiful bright house and pictures and music — such as 
he was going to have when he was grown. He re- 
membered his last Christmas and the tiny tree, 
and his mother smiling and asking him if it 
wasn’t pretty and if he wasn’t pleased, and sud- 
denly dropping her head on the table and sobbing 
as if her heart would break. The lump had come 
several times that evening, he found himself so 
often wishing that she could see his things. He 
wished little puckery bundles didn’t take such an 
awful long time to grow into girls and sisters a fel- 
low could speak to. Sometimes he wished Loisl 
was as big as Fraulein Doris, and sometimes he’d 
like her no bigger than Hildegard, and he wouldn’t 
mind if she were like Leni either; but it was long 
to wait for her to grow into a sensible kind of 
family that a fellow could take comfort in. As he 
remembered those ten pink toes, he smiled with 
lingering fondness, his eyes raised toward the 
frescoed ceiling — like what he was going to have 
by and by — his whole presence beautiful, uncon- 
scious, and free. 

It was but an instant he paused to get his 
thoughts straightened out — which were tumbling 
over one another in the queerest way — thoughts of 
home, of the Hort, of the farm, of all the people 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


233 


lie knew, the white procession, the brook at the 
child-market, and Pauli’s mother with the man’s 
hat on her head. 

“ I wish,” he began in a clear, confident voice 
and looking squarely in the major’s eyes, “ that 
you’d let Leni have Karl, because they want to be 
a family.” 

A suppressed frightened exclamation and the 
hurried opening and closing of a door were heard 
from the servants’ group. 

The major stared in astonishment at the boy 
who, however, gave him no opportunity to respond, 
but went on with calm truthfulness, every word 
distinct and sweet : 

“You’ll have to get Karl some sort of a place, 
you know, Herr Major. He’s got to have some 
kind of home ready for her. A gardener’s place 
she’d like best. But she doesn’t care. She only 
wants to be a family. She doesn’t want meadows 
or orchards or barns or cattle. She’d rather have 
the smallest house, the smallest room with Karl.” 

“But, Franzl,” stammered the amazed major. 

“ There’s nothing Karl can’t do,” continued the 
child, with his air of illuminated reminiscence. 
“ Her father can’t find any fault with him except 
he’s poor. It was three years ago he turned him 


234 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


out of the house, that very night. It was about a 
year ago he made up his mind she should marry 
Andreas Klumpp. When she tells her father 
Jenny’s giving less milk, they look in each other’s 
eyes and see Andreas Klumpp. No matter how 
hard and long work is, it comes to an end some 
time, and you can draw a long breath and say, 

‘ That’s done, thank heaven ! ’ but if it’s inside 
of you, if it’s two people pulling in different direc- 
tions under one roof, and each as tough as the 
other, it’s awful, it tires you out soul and body. 
First he said November, and when she told him 
she’d rather run away, then he said February. 
The women said she’d better take Klumpp and 
done with it and wear a decent face on her. What 
did she want more than the biggest farm for miles 
and miles ? As for Karl, she might as well give 
him up first as last, for old Christian never 
changes his mind.” 

“ The deuce he doesn’t ! ” muttered the major, 
laughing so hard that he had to wipe his eyes. 

Franzl went on with the tenacity of the Ancient 
Mariner. 

“Andreas Klumpp is sixty years old, has the 
palsy, a bald head, and one foot in the grave. It 
isn’t very lively at his house. Of course Leni 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


235 


can’t marry him when Karl is her real family and 
young and pleasant-looking, with merry eyes, and 
they are lovers. He came to work when he was a 
little boy. Her mother loved him like a son. If 
Leni can almost manage a whole farm year after 
year when her heart is heavy, it is reasonable to 
believe she could make a little room warm and 
cosey and bright, if she felt hopeful and glad. It 
was quiet that night, so she could tell me things. 
Sometimes her mouth is sealed. Then she has 
no one to speak to. If her mother had lived it 
would have been different.” 

“ Dear little Franzl ! ” murmured Doris. 

“ Have you finished ? ” asked the major. “ Are 
you sure you’ve reeled off all of it ? ” 

Franzl observed that they were laughing, but 
did not trouble himself about a trifle like that, be- 
ing too much absorbed in what he had had on his 
mind, weeks and weeks. 

“ Yes, I think that’s all, except perhaps you’ll let 
Karl be your gardener or something, because he’s 
only working in his cousin’s vineyard now, and 
perhaps you’d give them a little room. Leni is 
tired of the fight, and Andreas Klumpp is like a 
black shadow over everything, and Lutz is hard as 
a rock, and she’s worked as she’s never worked 


236 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


before ; and when she knew how hard her father 
felt toward her, she worked still better, hoping 
to please him. Wherever a sharp eye, a willing 
hand, and quick feet could help, they have helped 
her father, and he knows it. The women may say 
she’s proud and stiff — they do all the time, I 
hear them — but they can’t say she doesn’t work, 
nobody can. He sees how she tries day and 
night. But it’s no use. He’s got it into his head 
his farm and Andreas Klumpp’s farm must marry. 
It makes Leni tired and awful old. She isn’t 
any older than Fraulein Doris, though she looks 
miles older, Fraulein Doris is so white and soft. 
It’s work that ages women. She’s only young 
with Karl. She wants to be young and happy a 
little while with him. It isn’t any kind of a fam- 
ily if you marry a man with his foot in the grave 
and the palsy. It’s hard for an honest girl to dis- 
obey her father. But if he turns her out she’ll go. 
She and Karl belong to each other. That’s the 
long and short of it. She and I have been friends 
since the first day, and if she’s had any comfort 
since I came it’s through me, and that’s the truth. 
She wanted me. She felt kind to me. She 
thought a good deal about me. She believed I’d 
bring her good luck, but perhaps that was only a 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


237 


notion. She remembered how pleasant it was 
when her mother was alive, and Karl was a little 
boy and took care of the cows. Grown people 
want their mothers too. A room would do, but I 
think she’d like a house better.” He smiled pro- 
phetically at the carving and frescoes. “ Quite a 
small house would do for them. That’s my first 
wish,” he continued confidently, stooping to take 
up his clock. 

“ All of it? ” gasped the major. 

“ O Franzl, you are splendid ! You’re a daisy 
boy ! ” cried Hildegard. “ Such a beauty wish ! 
Now, papa, it’s your turn.” 

“ I don’t know that I’ve ever in my life been so 
amused,” said the major. 

Franzl regarded him with solemn wonder. 

“We laugh because it’s a surprise, dear,” Doris 
explained. 

“Yes, a great surprise,” her father agreed, em- 
phatically. “I did not anticipate this plunge into 
a village idyl.” 

“ But you promised, papa, and it is his wish.” 

“I promised anything reasonable and in my 
power, my dear. This is an unexpected turn of 
affairs. I must consider. Upon my word I’m 
interested, I’m touched. It’s astonishing what an 


238 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


unmitigated brute that sort of man can be. He’s 
what they call an honest man, a moral man, a 
thrifty man ! And now he’s going to sacrifice the 
happiness of a good, faithful daughter, and all for 
an idea — a selfish, soulless, mercenary, stubborn 
whim ! He’s a hard man, a very hard man. It is 
inconceivable ! ” 

With a fine crescendo effect he worked himself 
up to a high pitch of virtuous indignation. 

“ It’s not my matter. It’s not a thing for chil- 
dren to settle, obviously — still ” 

“But we like it, you know,” cried Hildegard, 
“ we like it terrible much, it is so grown up.” 

“ Are you going to let Karl be your gardener ? ” 
demanded Franzl. 

The major reflected. 

“ The more I think of it the less I see any rea- 
son why I should not give him a situation, pro- 
vided he’s a good man. I’m free to engage any- 
body that suits me, am I not? I always need 
extra help toward spring, don’t I? I can take 
Christian Lutz’s son-in-law as well as anybody 
else, can I not ? Of course I do not assume any 
responsibility in respect of people’s feelings and 
matrimonial intentions, but that Lutz is an uncom- 
monly disobliging, mulish fellow. He intends to 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


239 


annoy me and oppose me, and it seems, to annoy 
and oppose everybody else. It will be a healthy 
thing for him to find out others can oppose too. 
Upon my word I sympathize with the young peo- 
ple. I’ll do what I can. Unmannerly fellow, that 
Lutz! I wish you’d heard him talk to me, or 
rather not talk to me, perhaps I ought to say. At 
all events, when he spoke, and when he didn’t 
speak he was equally obnoxious. Why shouldn’t 
that nice, modest, pretty girl Leni have the man 
she wants ? Here, Franzl, here’s my hand on it. 
You’ve got me into curious business, but I’ll try 
Karl as under-gardener.” 

“ And the house ? ” 

“ It goes with the place.” 

“ All right,” said Franzl, with a satisfied smile. 
“ Of course I knew you would,” he added, approv- 

ingly- 

“ Thank you,” returned the major. 

“ Now please, papa, make them be still again 
for the second wish. Please shoo at Aunt Helene.” 

“ Isn’t one enough,” asked Doris, with vague 
uneasiness, “ so good a one too ? Shan’t we let 
Franzl keep the other till next time ? ” 

“ Why, Doris ! ” exclaimed Hildegard, in con- 
sternation. 


240 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


“ Aren’t you tired of it ? ” Doris threw her arm 
round her father’s neck. 

“ Not at all, not at all, I’m just getting into the 
spirit of the thing. I like Hildegard’s variety- 
show. That boy is priceless. My appetite is 
fairly whetted for his next preposterously droll 
idea.” 

“ It is only — I thought — perhaps ” 

“ What is it ? Why, Doris, you are pale, aren’t 
you?” 

“ It’s nothing, papa, nothing that I really know.” 
She glanced hastily round the room. There was 
no stranger there, only tolerably harmless aunts 
and cousins. She had motioned the servants to 
go out when Franzl began his harangue about 
Karl and Leni. She stooped and kissed her 
father’s forehead.” 

“ But Doris, if you please wouldn’t interrupt ! ” 
Hildegard pleaded. “You can kiss papa any 
time — just when Kurt for once in his life is quiet, 
too!” 

“Now Franzl, my boy,” said the major, genially, 
graciously, putting one knee comfortably over the 
other, “ what’s the second one ? ” 

“ I wish,” the boy began, in the simplest, most 
tranquil way, “that you’d please let Fraulein 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


241 


Doris and Herr Arno be a family too, because she 
like3 him, she’s always known him, he’s awful 
good to me and the other boys, and he’s worth six 
of Count Kosen, who is at the officers’ riding- 
school in Hanover, and head over heels in debt — 
mean debts too — and there’s going to be trouble 
for Fraulein Doris when he comes back in the 
spring. Down in Wynburg you are doing exactly 
what they are doing up in Waldheim. It’s a kind 
of trade everywhere, and it’s a sin to marry lands 
and titles together instead of hearts ; but if you are 
poor you haven’t much chance. So I thought if 
you would get Herr Arno a place, some sort of a 
book-y place, I suppose, it would be a great deal 
pleasanter, and then Fraulein Doris and he needn’t 
be wishing for something they can’t get, quite 
like Karl and Leni. It must be uncomfortable to 
be always wishing and wishing,” he concluded, 
easily. 

The major had given a start and risen with the 
child’s opening words, but Franzl was not light- 
ly turned from subjects which he had revolved 
months in his busy mind. What he had come to 
say,, he said, and as to people’s looks, there was a 
great deal in this respect which he found queer but 
unimportant — if they laughed or glared at him it 


242 


A BATTLE AND A BOY . 


didn’t seem to make much difference, since lie 
didn’t know why, and they always stopped sooner 
or later. 

“ Doris ! ” the major said, with sternness. 

“ It’s quite true,” the girl replied, bravely. 

“You did not ” 

“ Know ? Oh, papa, could I do such a thing ? 
I suddenly felt — feared what he would say.” 

“ My family affairs,” he muttered, staring with 
haughty incredulity at everybody except the cul- 
prit. 

“ Dear papa, come with me, come into your 
study, and mamma too. The dear little boy 
meant no harm. Don’t be vexed with him. It 
won’t be worse when we’ve spoken of it. Perhaps 
it will be better. Come,” she murmured caress- 
ingly, slipping her arm in his, her voice somewhat 
tremulous, her face sweet and resolute, and turn- 
ing on the threshold to smile at Pranzl. 

Left to themselves, the children held high car- 
nival. 

“ Oh, you do it splendidly,” Hildegard assured 
her chief orator and actor, pirouetting wildly about 
him. “It has gone off even better than I ex- 
pected. Because the wish ought always to make 
adventures, you know ; and when Beauty said she 


A BATTLE AND A BOY, 


243 


wanted only a rose, she got everybody into trou- 
ble, and you’ve made Doris cry, and mamma purse 
up her lips, and papa terribly angry, and they are 
in there having secrets ; and it’s splendid fun, and 
of course Arno’s millions nicer than Count Rosen ; 
and oh, Franzl, you are such a terrible nice little 
boy ! ” 

While Kurt produced his entire repertoire of 
grimaces to do justice to the moment, and laughed 
uncontrollably at what he called Franzl’s * trap to 
catch a sunbeam,’ and rolled on the carpet and 
kicked his baronial legs as a relief to his feel- 
ings. 

“ Why, Franzl, you have told him to his face he 
was like old Lutz trading his daughter, and the 
joke of it is I don’t see how he’s going to get out 
of it. You beat me even at impudence. But I’m 
with you so far as Arno is concerned.” 

“I don’t think you act very sensible,” Franzl 
calmly observed, trying to take his clock to pieces. 

“ I don’t want to act sensible. Anybody’d be a 
fool who was sensible after hearing you and papa. 

4 And what is it now, Franzl, my boy ? ’ says papa, 
smirking as bland as you please, and off goes your 
bomb ! ” 

“ Well, if I had to wish, why shouldn’t I wish 


244 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


what I did wish?” Franzl demanded, hotly. 
“ What are you grinning about, anyhow ? ” 

“ At papa, papa ! ” Kurt called, frantically. 
“ I’m laughing at him and I can’t stop if I die for 
it. And I’m not afraid of you, Franzl, you know, 
but it’s no use quarrelling with me to-night, when 
I’ve laughed till I’m weak as a rag and you can 
batter me and drown me and make an end of me 
in no time, easier than ever.” 

“ And you are full of my chocolate up to the 
throat, too,” remarked Hildegard, with asperity. 

“I don’t care when grown people laugh,” Franzl 
said, watching him, suspiciously. “ They are al- 
ways laughing when nobody knows why, but you 
make me mad.” 

“ Kurt is a terrible tease, you know, but he isn’t 
laughing at your wishes, really. He thinks they 
are splendid. He never could have thought of 
them himself.” 

“No, I couldn’t!” roared Kurt, breaking out 
with a fresh paroxysm. “ Nobody could ! Oh, it’s 
daisy — it’s daisy ! ” 

“It will all end right, you’ll see,” Hildegard 
said, joyfully; “and we’ve made the story, and 
there are two pairs of them.” 

“ I’m acquainted with lovers,” Franzl returned, 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


245 


loftily. “ I used to see them in the Yenter 
Thai.” 

It was long before the family council adjourned. 
The tapers' had burned low, the children sat on 
the floor chatting in drowsy, intermittent fashion, 
when the door opened and they sprang up, ex- 
pectant. 

Doris was pale, wet-eyed, but radiant. 

The major came straight to Franzl and stood a 
few moments looking down with curiously conflict- 
ing emotions before speaking. 

“ My friend — you small but formidable man — I 
have concluded to grant your second wish. My 
daughter, with considerable effort, has succeeded 
in convincing me that it is reasonable and in my 
power. You seem to be strangely involved in the 
fate of my family. I shall never forget, I trust 
not one of us will ever forget, that your fate, so far 
as human power can shape it, concerns us vitally 
— our honor and our faithfulness.” 

He paused, smiling rather sadly on them all. 

“ I don’t know whether you have made me win 
or lose to-night children. I hope it is all for the 
best.” 

“ Why, of course,” piped up Hildegard, reassur- 
ingly. “ This is exactly the way it ought to be.” 


246 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


“It is very sudden,” remarked Frau von Nor- 
mann, plaintively, “ and trying.” 

Doris stooped quickly and kissed her hand, 
whispering, with a mischievous smile : 

“ He is so very fond of Kurt ! ” 

“ Cheer up, papa,” said that young gentleman, 
“ it’s an awfully good joke, you know, but you are 
marching out of it with flying colors. I’m proud 
of you, and I vote for Arno every time.” 

“ Let it be said I have surrendered, after some 
pretty hot skirmishing — surrendered to youth. It 
has proved too strong for me. And, Franzl, I feel 
grateful that you have been generous and not ex- 
erted your power to its utmost limit — that you 
have tempered justice with mercy. I don’t think 
I could bear another of your clever surprises to- 
night. I’ll put that third wish down to your 
credit. I shall be relieved if we postpone it to an 
indefinite future.” 

“ I don’t mind,” returned Franzl, sleepy but dig- 
nified, and stretching himself to his extreme dimen- 
sions — always his instinct when he stood near the 
tall major. “ I don’t want anything more just now. 
When I do, I will tell you — if I can’t get it my- 
self.” 


XV. 


One hundred and twenty boys with their clean- 
est faces, their straightest backs, and their hair 
brushed till it stood on end with amazement, sat 
in long rows in the music-room of the St. John 
Hort. Now and then an inconsequent grin flick- 
ered along the line of preternaturally solemn coun- 
tenances. The shuffling of legs inevitable in as- 
semblies of boys, whether of blue or some other 
shade of blood, and doubtless inherent in the nat- 
ure of the animal, was a prominent feature of this 
occasion ; but if the bases of the little human col- 
umns were frisky, the shafts and capitals held 
themselves with imposing rigidity. It was rare 
that a giggle of the smallest dimensions broke loose, 
and any such impropriety was frowned down and 
suppressed by common consent. A child who was 
seized with a nervous tickling in his throat, and 
for his life could not help coughing occasionally, 
was promptly signalled what would happen to him 
upon leaving the building. Altogether, distin- 


248 


A BATTLE AND A DOT. 


guished sentiments prevailed in the Hort that 
evening, punctilious observance of the amenities 
of good society, so far at least as such mysteries 
had been penetrated, and an uncompromising de- 
termination to show to the world that the Hort 
as a body had nothing to learn in respect of con- 
duct appropriate to a Christmas festival. 

The solid integrity of the Hort’s demeanor was 
all the more praiseworthy because subjected to 
constant temptation. Kurt von Normann, sitting 
among the patrons and spectators, and shuffling his 
feet with as much animation as any rag-picker’s 
son, devoted himself assiduously to the task of un- 
dermining the virtuous gravity of the juvenile as- 
sembly, and even made faces behind the broad 
backs of church dignitaries. While Hildegard, 
with her long fair hair, white hat, ostrich plumes, 
and white fur coat was a distracting vision and 
set no better example of repose of manner than a 
humming-bird. 

Two tall pines with lighted tapers and glittering 
gewgaws stood on a platform at the end of the 
hall, and upon long tables were one hundred and 
twenty books, one hundred and twenty little 
mounds of cakes and fruit, and one hundred and 
twenty brown packages, each containing a box of 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


249 


writing and drawing materials and three coarse 
printed pocket-handkerchiefs. As handkerchiefs 
do not grow in gutters, and few boys of the Hort 
had ever owned a story-book, and the value of all 
mundane things depends upon the point of view, the 
princely munificence of these gifts was destined 
to make many hearts beat high. Speaking with 
historical accuracy, there were but one hundred and 
nineteen boys present. The one hundred and 
twentieth was grumbling at home with a broken 
arm and some bruises, the result of over-ambitious 
and forbidden efforts on the high trapeze in the 
absence of the teacher. 

There was also handsome presents for the Hort 
as a community, additions to the library, to the 
games and tools, and a few good engravings. In 
the background sat such parents as could be pre- 
vailed upon to come — Artur’s mother quite sober 
and respectable — the majority pleased and proud 
of their children. 

The ceremonies were a compromise between old 
and new methods. The young men agreed to de- 
fer to the conservative taste of the Committee in 
the opening exercises, provided they might be free 
to say what they pleased later. The programme 
then was conventional and edifying, beginning with 


250 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


a few introductory remarks by the director, who 
stated the province and scope of the Hort, its grati- 
fying success, the services and merits of the gen- 
tlemen of the Committee, all of whom looked 
bland and complacent at the tribute to their be- 
nevolence. Some of them responded by compli- 
ments to the Director, and there was considerable 
mutual felicitation interchanged by the grown boys 
before they deigned to consider the little boys 
sitting there in an inward fever of impatience, yet 
heroically straining after good behavior. 

During a very long extempore prayer the res- 
tiveness of the two hundred and thirty - eight legs 
increased to an alarming degree. It was as if they 
were on the point of taking to their heels, despite 
the stolidity of the faces above them. The legs 
evidently longed to skip about the streets in the 
freedom of the crisp December night. But mixed 
sentiments — faint new-born glimmerings of re- 
spectability and pride, as well as pleasing visions 
resulting from a sly cock of one eye at the brown 
packages, during prayer - time, w r ere not without 
influence, and heads w T on. Ornate remarks by 
different gentlemen followed the prayer, and a 
deal of well-meant advice to the boys. The vis- 
iting clergyman informed the weary, impatient lit- 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


251 


tie fellows whose young lives knew blows, profan- 
ity, hunger, and cold better than food, kindness, 
and decency, that discipline was necessary to 
moral growth, and that even their kind Heavenly 
Father, like their earthly parents, chastised them 
for their good. As a living example he mentioned 
their absent comrade, whom he declared God had 
especially punished for disobedience, breaking his 
arm and depriving him of the Christmas-feast be- 
cause he had disobediently ventured upon the 
high trapeze five minutes before the arrival of 
the teacher. The clergyman furthermore recom- 
mended them to fear God, honor the king, and al- 
ways be contented in the station in which they 
found themselves. 

His words were rather long, his phrases com- 
plex, his voice smooth and monotonous, so that 
the majority of the boys, already fatigued by the 
preliminaries, did not listen with closest attention. 
They had heard it all very often too. The one 
idea which they clearly received was that God was 
very angry with Max.. It must be true, for a cler- 
gyman with a long coat said so. It did not seem 
in any respect surprising, for in their experience 
somebody was always angry, whatever boys did, 
and — except at the Hort — authority and power 


252 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


were addicted to the administration of corporeal 
punishment and things were frequently broken ; 
sometimes the stick, sometimes a part of the boy, 
it didn’t matter much which. Still Max was a 
good fellow, and the best gymnast among them, 
and there was not a healthy Hort boy who, pro- 
vided he got the chance, was not ready on the in- 
stant to attempt what Max had attempted. As to 
punishment, whether human or divine, they had al- 
ways been hit and hurt physically, but it would 
never occur to them on this account to abandon 
their circus-tricks. 

After the Committee and patrons had enjoyed 
their own fluency for some time, and told one an- 
other how wise, philanthropic, progressive, large- 
hearted, public-spirited, etc., etc., they all were — 
the boy with the dressing-gown — like old Grimes’s 
coat, all buttoned down before — stalked superbly 
into the foreground, and spoke his piece in unim- 
peachable sing-song. The boys revived and felt 
that their turn had finally come. Artur limped up 
to the platform, stood by the piano, turned toward 
the guests his pale wizened face and the luminous 
intensity of eyes that looked as if they already saw 
into the Spirit Land, and unmoved by the presence 
of strangers, his strong, sweet soprano led his com- 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


253 


racles. And how the dregs and slums sang ! Like 
glad angels, like pure joyous beings ignorant of sin 
or pain, yet with that most touching quality which 
haunts the fresh voices of young boys. 

More recitations followed, stirring tales of 
knights and kings, of brave deeds and high 
thoughts told by golden-tongued poets to the world, 
and interpreted by these little men according 
to the individual receptivity. One after another, 
awkward and ashamed, in their queer clothes — 
baggy or pinched as the case might be, but usually 
made for some other boy’s angles — they marched 
up to the platform and spoke, some with a dull 
hang-dog mumble, others with a certain dash and 
freedom in the wrong place, few with any trace of 
comprehension and sympathy ; yet the memory of 
Goethe and Schiller was not desecrated by their 
stumbling efforts. 

Franzl came up last. He had learned Schiller’s 
“Hostage.” It was long, but his omnivorous mem- 
ory devoured the twenty stanzas of seven lines with 
little effort. He did not know that it was hack- 
neyed, and he could tell its tale of heroic friend- 
ship with great swing and warmth, as if he had 
discovered it. He had made his newly acquired 
bow, and was on the point of beginning, when 


254 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


Arno motioned him to wait and Major yon Nor- 
mann came forward, to the ecstasy of the Hort. 
Every eye gleamed, and it must be confessed the 
rascals paid keener attention to each button and 
stripe of his uniform than to all the advice and 
admonitions thus far showered upon them. 

“ On the part of his Majesty the King, I have 
the honor and happiness to present to my young 
friend Franzl Reiner a medal rarely bestowed 
upon a child, nobly merited in this instance by 
Franzl, who risked his life to save the life of a 
boy who was not even his friend.” 

At a gesture from his father, Kurt came forward 
and attached the shining silver medal to Franzl’s 
jacket, and Kurt’s worst enemy must have admit- 
ted that he officiated in this ceremony with evi- 
dent heartiness, and a most gentlemanlike bearing, 
while on his face was an expression of thoughtful- 
ness and affection much more becoming than his 
habitual contortions. His virtuous intervals never 
were of long duration, however, and having distin- 
guished himself for three minutes, he gave Franzl 
a slap on the back and whispered : 

“ Now spout, old fellow ! ” 

But Franzl could not, for the boys were cheer- 
ing and everybody was coming to shake hands 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


255 


with him and crowd about him, and he never felt 
so bewildered in his life. 

“ What does it all mean ? ” he asked Arno. 

“ That you are decorated for bravery.” 

Franzl was prodigiously excited. There was 
the medal, and the King had sent it, and the 
King’s head was on it, but he knew he could not 
help diving for Kurt when he didn’t come up 
again. The ladies and gentlemen, all talking at 
once, confused him. He did not feel happy or 
clear in his mind about anything. He wanted to 
rush out of sight, but there was his piece. He 
was proud of saying the longest one, and knew 
he said it well. . 

Presently there was silence. He found himself 
alone on the platform. The ushers had reseated 
the guests. The boys’ tumult had subsided. 
Arno nodded to him to begin. 

But where was the poem ? He stared at the 
ceiling, at the floor, at the familiar faces. He 
could not think of one word. 

A friendly voice gave him the title and first 
line. Useless. It was gone, quite gone. His 
memory, the pride of the Hort as much as Max’s 
muscle and Artur’s voice, had deserted him. 

He saw the rows of boys. They did not laugh. 


256 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


It was terribly still. Hildegard gave an audible 
sob. He caught Kurt’s eye. It was indeed an 
awful moment if Kurt von Normann’s mocking 
face could wear that look of consternation. 

Franzl’s knees shook under him. He heard his 
heart beating in his ears. It seemed to him all 
was lost. He longed to run away where nobody 
would ever find him, but his feet were glued to 
the floor. Surely he had stood there years. 
Heinrich spoke, but Franzl could not understand. 
His throat felt parched. He moved his hand 
toward it mechanically and touched the medal. 
His stage-fright suddenly turned into hot wrath. 
If they hadn’t given him that old medal he 
wouldn’t have forgotten his piece. Something in 
the very heart of the boy rose up with dogged de- 
termination not to be beaten. He threw back his 
head and looked at them all, yet at no one. 

“ Give me five minutes,” he cried, with desper- 
ate, passionate energy, “only five minutes — and 
I’ll say it — every word ! ” 

With a stag-like bound, he was out of the 
room, followed by the frantic cheers of the Hort 
boys, and a great stir of sympathy among the vis- 
itors. Arno and Heinrich were instantly with 
him. He did not reply to them, gave but one 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


257 


swift glance at the open book held toward him, 
saw no words, only the familiar look of the lines 
and white spaces, drew a deep breath, smiled 
rapturously, sprang back to his place and began 
his poem, his voice clear and confident— as he 
went on losing himself more and more in the 
brave tale. 

When he had finished and the boys yelled with- 
out rebuke, and the people crowded round him 
again and shook hands with him, and some of the 
ladies laughed in a queer kind way, he thought it 
was because he had said his piece so well, and 
was vastly elated, and resolved to learn one twice 
as long for next time. 

Arno ought properly to have spoken now, but 
he thought the children had been held uncon- 
scionably long in leash, and he chose to let them 
loose upon their goodies and brown packages in- 
stead of haranguing them. A full hour passed in 
which they ate and gloated over their presents and 
were happy and unconstrained, and certainly very 
harmless, while now and then somebody played 
or sang without interrupting the joyous hum. 
Many of the visitors had gone when some of the 
older boys cried : “ Herr Arno promised us a 
speech.” 


258 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


“ Your fun is better than my speech.” 

“No, no,” the Hort protested. “We like your 
kind of talk.” 

The smallest boys were summarily seated and 
the chattering ones effectually silenced by a self- 
appointed police force. In a few moments the 
room was still, every boy in his place, every eye 
raised toward Arno, who, in a kind, quiet tone, 
began : 


XVI. 

“ Boys : Perhaps you think when we hear mu- 
sic, that we all hear it alike. We do not. We all 
hear the sound, but there is a music within the 
music which some hear better than others ; while 
a deaf man does not know what he misses when 
the birds sing, and the wind sweeps through the 
pines as we used to hear it on our tramps in the 
woods last autumn. Perhaps you think that when 
we look at that picture of Sir Walter Scott and his 
dogs, our eyes see it alike. They do not. We 
all see the frame, the glass, the figures, but there 
is a meaning in the lines revealed to some more 
than to others ; while a blind man can never know 
how the purple dawn chases away the night, and 
how tender and beautiful the sunset makes our 
valley and our hills. A man destitute of the sense 
of smell would care less than we for our violets 
and mignonette and lilies-of-the-valley, that we 
love and tend under our windows every spring, 
and that send their sweet breath through our 


260 


A BATTLE AND A EOT. 


open casements until the whole Hort is full of fra- 
grance. 

When great men, like Goethe and Shakespeare, 
speak to us, again we do not hear alike. We all 
hear the words, but there is something we do not 
seize. Their inner thought, their spirit does not 
reach us all. If it did it would make us happy as 
a Beethoven Symphony does some of us, as that 
copy of the Sistine Madonna does others. And if 
we could comprehend all that these great souls 
mean, then, in one sense, we should be as great 
as Shakespeare and Goethe and Beethoven and 
Baphael. According as we understand and feel 
them, are we near and like them ; for this we need 
the eyes behind the eyes and the ears within our 
ears. 

When a man is blind or deaf, it is sad to think 
how much of this beautiful world he loses. It is 
sadder still if his inner eyes are blind, his inner 
ears deaf ; if, with no physical defect, he is un- 
moved by the music we love, by the noble lines of 
“ The Dying Gaul/' which I showed you in the 
Art Gallery, by the great Titian we saw to- 
gether, by the lofty columns and vaults of the 
cathedral, or by deep thoughts such as you have 
repeated in your poems to-day. He is the most 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


261 


wretched of men, and he does not know what he 
misses in onr wonderful world. 

Boys, we cannot all sing like Artur, and some of 
us would never be musicians if we should study 
music all our lives ; but most of us can learn each 
day to care more for and understand better what 
he sings and the sweetness of his voice. We can- 
not all draw as well as Paul, but we can become 
more appreciative of his work. We cannot all carve 
as cleverly as Robert, but we can learn to estimate 
more highly his diligence and skill. W^e cannot 
all lead in the gymnasium like Max, but we can 
admire his courage, strength, and suppleness, and 
the patience he shows each day in his regular ex- 
ercise. We cannot all memorize as fast and easily 
as Franzl, but we can take pleasure in his ability 
and learn, as he will learn, to love more strongly 
and comprehend better the beautiful things he re- 
peats to us. We all have not Otto’s knowledge of 
insects and birds and plants, and his loving way 
of understanding their habits and needs, but the 
closer we sympathize with his intimate acquaint- 
ance with the humblest weed and moss and twig, 
the better for us. Few of us are so gentle and 
harmless as our little Hans here, but if we grow 
less rough and imperious and jealous, we imitate 


262 


A BATTLE AND A DOT. 


him in the quality in which he surpasses most of 
ns — a forgiving spirit. So day by day, as we go 
on doing our own work and rejoicing in our com- 
rade’s, we shall find that our inner eyes and inner 
ears which perceive beautiful sights and sounds 
are developing all the time, until we discover hap- 
piness on every side that is hidden from us now. 

Boys, once we lived in caves and jungles. By 
“ we ” I mean the human race, our ancestors, in 
far, far-off times. We were like brutes, but there 
was something divine in us, something that made 
us wish, something that was not content to live 
like the beasts of the field. We wished to defend 
ourselves against the wild animals ; we tore down 
branches of trees for clubs and seized sharp stones 
for weapons. We were cold and struck fire by 
rubbing sticks together. We wanted to sail on a 
river, we hollowed out a tree and made the first 
boat. When we began to use these things for our 
needs, that was the beginning of science and art. 
If we had not wished and worked and struggled, 
we should be living in caves to-day, provided we 
were living at all ; but if we had not used what in- 
telligence we had, the beasts would have devoured 
us, because they were the stronger. Out of the 
wishing of those savage cave-dwellers, and the 


A BATTLE AND A BOY . 


263 


wishing and striving of the men that followed 
through the long ages, came the Thought of 
Shakespeare and Goethe and Michael Angelo and 
Beethoven and Newton, that ennobles the world 
to-day. In the depths of the poor cave-dweller’s 
soul was hidden something akin to these mighty 
men. In the souls of the mightiest and best, of all 
grand thinkers, teachers, inventors, singers, poets, 
painters, heroes, saints, and martyrs, still lingers 
something of the cave-dweller. And you and I, 
boys, this night, have something of both in us, 
something always ready to pull us down, and make 
us like the brutes, something always ready to help 
us to rise toward heights where the great and 
good stand. God meant it to be so. He meant 
us to wish, to work, and to rise. 

Wishing, then, is not wrong. But if we knew 
a man’s secret wish we should know the man. I 
have overheard some of your Christmas wishes. I 
heard one of you wish for a sugar-candy palace. 
I think this was a very natural wish. The sugar 
palace doubtless looked pretty and tempting in the 
shop window. But by the wish we know that it 
was a very little boy who thought this, the most de- 
sirable thing that the Christ-kind could bring him. 
I heard another of you say that he wished he had 


264 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


a horse and two big dogs. I think this a most 
excellent wish. Even if I did not know him, I 
should know he was an active, manly fellow who 
loved animals. I hope he may have them some 
day. I have no doubt that he will if he wants 
them enough to work well for them. 

There have been legions of poor boys in this 
world, whose hearts were great to wish and to hold 
their wish against mighty odds. 

Of whom must we first think when we remember 
poor boys this day ? Of Christ, the poorest boy of 
all, so poor that He did not know where to lay His 
head. You all know the story of His life. Born 
in a manger ; a humble child ; wandering, when a 
man, homeless — suffering from hunger and thirst 
and weariness, the companion of outcasts, of 
wretched men and women, whom He with infinite 
compassion sought to help and comfort, himself an 
outcast ; hated and scorned by the rich and strong, 
because His teachings disturbed their comfort — 
persecuted, acquainted with grief — this was the 
Christ who has moved the world. The world — 
society, as we say to-day — spoke ill of Him, be- 
cause He denounced its errors, its falseness, and 
hypocrisy. Not only in His last supreme hours, 
but all His life, His soul was torn with an agony of 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


2G5 


longing to open men’s eyes and hearts to truth. 
Centuries have passed. Kingdoms have come and 
gone. Creeds have lived and flourished and died. 
Keligions, each claiming to be Christ’s own, have 
hated and fiercely fought with one another. To- 
day scores of sects proclaim Christ under different 
forms, and with reason, for in all the churches 
His pure spirit lives : not in their bishops’ robes, 
their endowments, their rites, their prejudices or 
exclusiveness — not in their phylacteries, as Christ 
said — but in their charity. The voice of the poor 
boy of Nazareth has gone out over all the earth, 
teaching us to be tolerant, to be pitiful, and to 
seek truth fearlessly. This, boys, is the lesson of 
Christmas Hay, of Christ’s Hay — peace, good-will 
to men, love, forgiveness, and fearless truth. 

Martin Luther’s father was, as you have read, 
a poor miner. Martin used to sing in the streets 
for bread. He was often cold, often hungry. I 
have told you his story. You know that he is 
famous all over the world for his bravery, his 
zeal, and his good life, and that his undaunted 
spirit influenced princes, powers, nations, all Eu- 
rope. 

Haydn, one of the greatest composers, was a 
poor boy. His father was a wheelwright, his 


266 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


mother a cook. Rossini, another great musician, 
was the child of street-singers. Hans Andersen, 
who wrote the lovely fairy tales I have read to 
you — tales that have been translated into all the 
languages of Europe, and even into Chinese, Jap- 
anese, and Hindostanee, was a poor shoemaker’s 
son, so ugly and awkward that he was laughed at. 
His early life was very hard. But he worked and 
wrote on. Before he died he was greatly loved 
and honored, and the world remembers him kindly 
because he has made so many little children happy. 
I could never tell you all the authors who have 
been poor. Robert Burns, the Scotch poet, was a 
very poor peasant. Schiller was poor, Shakes- 
peare, it is said, was poor, so was Moliere, the 
Frenchman who wrote the wonderful plays. You 
have been told something of them all. 

Christopher Columbus, who discovered the New 
World, was a humble boy, the son of a wool-comber. 
He was born near Genoa, an Italian sea-port. As 
a boy he used to love to hang about the wharves, 
and have long talks with old sailors, and pore over 
maps and charts. When he wanted to sail west- 
ward to reach India, as he supposed, nobody 
would listen to him. They thought him a dreamer. 
He went through great hardships and discourage- 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


267 


ments, but lie kept his hope in his heart fifteen 
long years. At last he got help and sailed. On 
the unknown seas his men were frightened, begged 
to go back, wept, threatened and cursed him ; but 
he stood firm, and after seventy days saw land, 
one of the Bahama Islands. Columbus’s life was 
hard and cruel. He met with great ingratitude 
and died poor. But to-day we revere his divine 
patience, and know that his inner eyes beheld land 
unseen by his fellows. 

So it is with the great inventors. Stephenson, 
the inventor of the locomotive, was a poor little 
English boy, the son of a colliery laborer. He 
was so ignorant that his wife taught him to read 
after they were married. When he was but four- 
teen he became fireman in the colliery. He de- 
lighted in machinery, and was always working and 
contriving something new. Finally he made his 
engine. It went only thirty miles an hour. We 
do not realize to-day how astonished the country 
people must have been to see it snorting through 
the fields, but the youngest of you can understand 
more or less how much his invention has benefited 
the world. His early life was full of privation 
and struggle. Afterward he built many engines, 
owned coal mines, and wealth and honors poured 


268 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


upon him, but lie never changed his simple mode 
of life and worked diligently always. 

Richard Arkwright, inventor of the cotton-spin- 
ning machine, was also a poor little English boy, 
without education. He worked as barber until he 
was nearly thirty years old. When he was thirty- 
six, he made a cotton-spinning frame, by which, 
for the first time, cotton thread could be made by 
machinery, fine and strong enough for the warp or 
long threads of cloth, which before his time were 
of linen, only the weft or cross-threads being of 
cotton. The workmen and manufacturers tried to 
ruin him, because they feared his machine would 
cut off work, for one man with his frame could do 
as much work as a hundred and thirty men could 
before ; but he succeeded in spite of everything. 

Edison, the American who invented the won- 
derful phonograph I took you to see, and a tele- 
phone and improvements in electric light, and 
many marvellous things, was a poor boy with lit- 
tle education, who sold newspapers on a railway 
train. He loved chemistry, made a little labor- 
atory, and was always trying experiments, so the 
people laughed at him and called him lunatic 
or “ looney.” One day he almost set fire to the 
train, and the conductor threw his treasures away. 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


269 


He then got some old type, and printed a little 
newspaper which he sold to railway travellers. 
Now he is honored and admired all over the 
world. He is always wishing and working, and 
studying the great laws of nature, and seeing with 
his inner eyes what the world does not yet see. 

Kepler, the famous astronomer, born as you 
know not far from us, had much trouble all his 
life, and was very poor. It did not prevent his 
love for science, and he found out the laws that 
rule the motion of the planets, by which we are 
enabled to tell the place of anyone of them in its 
orbit at any time, past or present. From these 
laws sprang the great discoveries of Newton, of 
which I have often told you older boys. Gutten- 
berg, though not born poor, was a poor work- 
ingman. Sir Humphry Davy, the great English 
chemist, was a very poor boy. He did important 
scientific work, became honored and distinguished 
for his learning, and invented a safety-lamp which 
has saved thousands of miners’ lives. For this he 
would not take out a patent, because his object was 
not to make money, but to help his fellow -men. 
Kobert Fulton, the inventor of the steamboat and 
first steam war-ship ever made, was a poor boy. 
Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, was poor. So 


270 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


was Elias Howe, whose improvements on the sew- 
ing machine have* caused one of the greatest, if 
peaceful, revolutions the world has known. Benja- 
min Franklin, one of the most important Americans, 
was a poor boy whose father was a tallow-chandler. 
Franklin became a learned and distinguished man, 
of service to his country and the world. He made 
many experiments with electricity, and found out 
how to protect houses with the lightning-rod. 
Giotto, the famous Italian painter, architect, and 
sculptor, was a poor little shepherd boy. The 
story is told that the painter Cimabue found him 
sketching a sheep on a piece of smooth slate as he 
was watching his flock on the hillside. Cimabue, 
struck with his talent, took him home as a pupil. 
So many of the greatest painters and sculptors 
were poor, humble, ignorant boys, I cannot begin to 
tell their names in this short time. Thorwaldsen, 
whose Christ we have here, was very, very poor, so 
was Kaulbach, so was the famous French peasant 
painter Millet. So were many rulers, generals, 
statesmen — men who have occupied positions of 
eminence in every field and influenced the thought 
of their epoch. Not a few of the Presidents of the 
United States were poor boys who grew to be 
strong men. Of these, Abraham Lincoln is the 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


271 


one whose story we in Germany know best, and 
whose memory we most revere. For he was not 
only a great ruler, but a wise and lofty spirit, full 
of tolerance, of compassion, and comprehension. 
Everywhere we look, we find poor boys who have 
become great and helpful to humanity. Moses 
and scores of Bible heroes ; Socrates and Aristotle, 
of whom I have told you and who were among the 
greatest men who ever lived, and many other Greek 
philosophers. The travellers and explorers, too. 
Stanley, whose “ Dark Continent ” is in our li- 
brary, was a poor-house child. Monarchs are 
glad to do him honor to-day, because he has 
opened a new world to us and has exhibited mar- 
vellous fortitude, force of will, brain-power, and 
manliness. 

Some of these names you know. Some you do 
not — which does not matter. You will know them 
the sooner for hearing them. It is a pity to men- 
tion them so briefly, for some of these men’s 
struggles have been so vast, so pathetic and he- 
roic, they would touch your hearts and make you 
love and honor the human race, because it has 
produced so brave souls. But we shall have time 
to speak of them later. 

They are but a few taken at random from the 


272 


A BATTLE AND A DOT. 


vast army of poor boys that has advanced the 
progress of the world. How did they do it? 
They wished, and they worked with the strong un- 
conquerable will that gave them courage and 
patience to contend with obstacles. When rich 
men have been great — and rich men also have been 
great and good — they too have worked. No great 
soul ever lived a life of ease and indolence. Caesar 
and Titian and Bismarck were not poor men, but 
they worked more than most poor men ever 
dreamed of working. Holbein and Diirer, and 
ages ago, great Phidias and Praxiteles, were not 
poor, but they also wished and willed and worked 
patiently to fix their thought on canvas and in 
marble. For, remember, great artists and great 
thinkers, not alone men with spades and trowels, 
are workers. 

Looking back, then, at the wishers, you will see 
that it is worth while to wish. Our wishes change. 
Perhaps by next Christmas, Fritzchen will not 
want the sugar palace most. It is good that we 
can begin each day fresh, and if our wish is small 
make it larger. Wish for knowledge, and you will 
get it. Wish for wealth, and you may get it. 
Neither the one nor the other is in itself valuable, 
but only as means toward an end, that is, only as 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


273 


you are in right relations to your fellowmen, only 
as you are large toward them, and just and help- 
ful. We hear much talk nowadays — you boys 
hear it also I am sure — about labor and capital, 
and some very wild ideas about capitalists. There 
are many capitalists who do a vast amount of good, 
who have worked hard for their money and who 
have earned it honestly, and it is as much theirs as 
the bit of silver belongs to one of you that some- 
body gives him for running on an errand. It 
would then be your capital. You would not thank 
anybody for taking it away from you, because he 
had earned nothing. Before we hate people for 
being what we unjustly call more lucky than we, 
let us consider candidly what immeasurable good 
such men as the Rothschilds and Sir Moses 
Montefiore have done in the world ; for they have 
fed the hungry and clothed the poor, and edu- 
cated and comforted and sustained in private as 
well as public charities, and while giving poise to 
kingdoms, have often not let their right hand 
know what their left had done, in loving, helpful, 
secret deeds. And therefore, boys, although there 
are higher and happier goals than wealth alone, 
set your ambition on becoming capitalists rather 
than bootblacks ; for believe me — as much abused 


274 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


as capitalists are at tlie moment, they do more 
good in the world. 

When ten boys run a race, not all can win. 
One will run fastest. We know that beforehand. 
If the ten could run alike, there would be no race. 
But if the one who is beaten worst can forgive the 
victor, can keep his temper and feel no hate or 
jealousy, although he really wanted to win, he has 
done something better than all the fast running in 
the world. He has climbed far from the caves. 
So it is in all your play, so it is in your lessons, 
and so will it be when you are men. 

Looking upon all your familiar faces, I see 
among you boys from families professing the 
Protestant, Catholic, and Hebrew faiths. For any 
boy who wishes can come here without distinction 
of creed, and we of the Hort believe that in all 
religions, in all nations, at all times, there have 
been and are great and good men. In opening our 
doors to all, we feel that we follow the teachings of 
Christ and of all true lovers of mankind. 

What are the mottoes on our walls ? 

Coarse rice for food , water to drink , the tended 
arm for a pillow, happiness may be enjoyed even 
with these, but without virtue, both riches and honor 
seem to me like the passing cloud . 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


275 


Who said this? Confucius, the great Chinese 
teacher, who lived a noble and beautiful life more 
than five hundred years before Christ. 
f Faithfulness and sincerity are the highest things , 
he said too, and also that excellent motto for us 
workers : 

If I am building a house and stop before the last 
basketful of earth is placed on the summit , I have 
failed of my ivork. But if I have placed but one 
basketful on the plain , and go on, I am really build- 
ing a mountain . 

If it is not right, do not do it ; if it is not true, do 
not say it, said the Roman Emperor Marcus Aure- 
lius, and that is so simple that the very youngest 
of you can remember and understand it. 

What said Zoroaster, the Persian who lived, 
some scholars believe, many thousand years before 
Christ? 

Think purely, speak purely, act purely. 

Is not that as good for the Hort to-day as it was 
for the Persians, thousands of years ago ? 

Out of the ancient religions of India we have 
taken from the Brahmans : 

The soul itself is its own ivitness, the soul itself is 
its own refuge. Offend not thy conscious soul — the 
supreme internal witness of men. 


276 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


And from the Buddhists : 

I take my refuge in tliy Law of Good . 

I take my refuge in thy Order. 

There, on the south wall, we have an Egyptian 
motto written four thousand years ago or more : 

Man's heart rules the man. The had man's heart 
is what the ivise know to he death. He who made 
us is present with us, though we are alone. 

Keep thy heart with all diligence , for out of it are 
the issues of life, says the Old Testament, and 
again : 

Whither shall I go from thy spirit, or whither 
shall I flee from thy presence ? If I climb up into 
heaven thou art there , if I go down into the abyss, 
thou art there also. If I take the wings of the morn- 
ing and remain in the uttermost parts of the sea, 
even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right 
hand shall cover me. 

While Christ, whose birth we commemorate in 
our festival this evening, gives us many divinely 
helpful words : 

Suffer the little children to come unto me. 

Do good to them that hate you. 

Blessed are the pure in heart. 

Blessed are the peacemakers. 

Love one another. 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


277 


Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
heart and with all thy soul , and ivitli all thy mind , 
and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. 

In all our rooms we have such words, and why ? 

To show us that men, thousands of years ago, 
in far-off lands, and in all lands were like us to-day, 
in spite of error, looking upward, seeking truth — 
and that the human race is one. 

Now, boys, I want to call your attention to an 
important fact. The same power that placed in 
us the striving, the desire for good, the seeking 
after God, the great hunger of the heart, has also 
surrounded us with laws of which our savage an- 
cestors knew nothing, and we to-day know little 
enough ; but the more we study the meaning of 
those laws, the more the world grows. One thing 
is sure, whatever creed a man cherishes, he cannot 
break those laws without taking the consequences. 
Whether Protestant or Catholic, if he puts his 
hand in the fire he burns it. If Confucius, or Zo- 
roaster, or Marcus Aurelius, or St. Paul had disre- 
garded the law of gravitation and walked off a 
precipice, he would have fallen on the rocks below 
and broken his bones or been killed. If a Bap- 
tist takes deadly poison, he will die as surely as a 
Methodist. Bad drainage and filth may cause 


278 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


fever and death whether the people inhabiting the 
house are Jesuits or Lutherans. No one can cheat 
the great inexorable laws of the universe. 

Once our race was afraid of what it did not 
understand, of sun and winds and storms, light- 
ning and thunder. We have learned to recognize 
the sun as our life-giving principle, to watch the 
marvellous motions of the planets, to use winds 
and heat and steam, to call down the lightning to 
serve us, and we know that the powers of nature 
are our friends, not our enemies, provided we find 
out their laws. All about us, in the whole uni- 
verse, in our world, our own bodies, minds, hearts, 
and souls, such laws, if kept, lead to health and 
truth and right ; if broken, to disease and wrong 
and misery and ruin. Galileo, Bruno, Newton, 
and Laplace, Columbus and Magellan, Lavoisier, 
Yolta, Galvani, and Darwin were all studying them. 
To-day many scholars in many fields are seeking 
them, in the stars, in electricity, and chemistry, 
and botany, and geology. Let us humbly and rev- 
erently study them too, for they are all manifes- 
tations of the Infinite. But the laws are there, 
whether we refuse to know them or not. The 
earth and the other planets revolved round the sun 
before Copernicus found it out and told the world. 


A BATTLE AND A BOY: 


279 


The law of gravitation existed before Newton saw 
the apple fall. The laws would be true even if the 
whole world denied them still. 

When people first saw an engine steaming along 
the railway they thought it was the devil. I know 
some old ladies who declare that the phonograph 
is wicked, and that it is the devil’s voice speak- 
ing in it. They are very excellent and pious old 
ladies, and they are positive that all scientific men 
are doomed to eternal punishment. Within fifty 
years, when ether was first used, many good people 
grew much excited about it, and asserted that it 
was a sinful thing to try to deaden the pain that 
God sent. People thought Galileo a terrible 
sinner when he said the earth moved round the 
sun, and they persecuted him for it. In those 
days they used to torture and burn men who had 
strange mathematical and astronomical instru- 
ments, and the ones who tried to prevent scholars 
from studying God’s ways were religious people 
who really believed it their duty to put men in 
prison when they discovered anything new about 
the world we live in. If Mr. Edison had lived a 
few centuries ago, and the Inquisition had ex- 
amined his workshops, it would probably have con- 
demned him for witchcraft and boiled him in oil. 


280 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


Yet his researches are reverent. He believes that 
the existence of a Supreme God is proved by 
chemistry alone. Like great poets, the inventors 
also are prophets and seers. There is always op- 
position, until people have time to accustom them- 
selves to the new thought, that is, to the old truth 
which is new to them. Nevertheless patient men 
work on, and day by day learn more of the great 
laws which God does not reveal to us all at once, 
but only in response to our search and striving. 

Eemember, too, they are for us to study in our- 
selves, in the smallest as in the greatest things, and 
that what each of us does, what he thinks and 
feels, is important to the whole world. When 
Hans does his sums right, the world’s arithmetic is 
the better by exactly those sums. When we con- 
quer the low word, the mean impulse, are cleanly 
and decent, when we resist the temptation to lie, 
and speak the truth bravely, the morals of the 
whole world are higher, and we help not only our 
brothers who live now, but our brothers who will 
live when we are dead. 

If you learn to be beaten in any race without hat- 
ing, learn to let people differ with you without think- 
ing them bad, learn, as Yoltaire said, to “ forgive the 
virtues of your enemies,” learn that men working 


A BATTLE AND A BOY; 


281 


in totally different directions may all be working 
right, because for the progress of the human race ; 
that a Caesar, a Kant, a Bach, a Pascal, a Buddha, 
and that glorious, sweet - souled martyr, Father 
Damien, who went to take care of the poor lepers, 
all have helped the world ; that millions of men 
and women of whom we shall never hear, near us 
and in nations far from us, with religious views 
flatly opposed to ours, are helping the growth of 
the world to-day — learn all this, and you will in- 
deed have left the caves far, far behind. 

You can learn these things. I know you, every- 
one. I believe in you. But you must think. 
Without thought you cannot grow into just and 
large-hearted men. If you think, if you ask your- 
selves what is the cause of this, what will be the ef- 
fect of that ; how by this shall I harm myself, and 
therefore my brother and the whole world, then 
your inner eyes and ears — that is your soul, your 
spirit — will develop. Take this home in your 
hearts, boys, there is nothing without a cause and 
every cause has an effect. God’s truth is strong 
enough to bear investigation, whether among the 
planets, in the tides, or in our own hearts. Our 
probing can never hurt it or make it less holy. 
Mysteries there will always be. Not only are we 


282 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. 


confronted by mystery when we look up in the sky 
and consider that our earth is one of many planets 
circling round the sun, and that there are innu- 
merable suns each with companies of planets re- 
volving round them and probably innumerable in- 
habited worlds in illimitable space ; not only is it 
a mystery when death comes or a child is born, 
but the tiniest flower is as great a mystery, and 
we behold a mystery when we look into our bro- 
ther’s eyes. 

Yet the more we search for truth the better we 
comprehend that precisely because the Supreme 
Euler is all- just, He does not, cannot change His 
laws to suit our unjust and ignorant desires. Since 
our forefathers believed that the earth was flat, and 
the sky a canopy over it like a huge blue umbrella, 
not very far off, and the stars mere stationary 
points of light twinkling prettily for the sole pur- 
pose of pleasing mankind, we have learned some- 
thing of God’s laws, it is true. But never forget 
that what we know of them, in comparison with the 
vast unknown tilings surrounding us on every side, 
and reaching out beyond the most remote star we 
see, is but the humblest, tiniest, most insignificant 
beginning of what men who come after us will know, 
of what we ourselves may know in some other life. 


A BATTLE AND A BOY. • 


283 


It is because the laws are there that we can find 
comfort when cruel sorrow comes to us. In our 
bitterest grief we know that infinite justice, not 
caprice, rules all nature. Because of these very 
laws which govern our spirits as well as our 
bodies, we dare hope for other lives, other worlds 
— wherever, whatever they may be. Because of 
God’s laws, feebly as we now discern them, we can- 
not doubt that divine love is the soul of the uni- 
verse. 

Go on then. Be wishers, thinkers, workers. 
Fear nothing. Make men of yourselves, men to 
be trusted whatever your work in life, trusted 
when alone — at midnight — when none will ever 
know your thought or your deed. On then, Hort 
boys, away from the caves — on toward the heights ! 

I thank you for your attention and courtesy. 

Good-night. God bless you.” 

The boys poured out pell-mell. Arno heard 
their comments as they passed down the hall. 

“ I’ll box all your ears,” said one — “ those that 
show and those that don’t.” 

“ I’m going to find a cave and live in it,” another 
announced, “and have a good big knotty club 
made out of a whole tree, and I’ll lie in wait for 


284 


A BATTLE AND A BOT. 


people who go to walk in the woods. But I sup- 
pose as soon as I begin to have some fun, there’ll 
be a darned old policeman after me.” 

Arno smiled without surprise or discouragement. 
He had often listened to society’s infantile babble 
after lectures on great poets, art, astronomy, elec- 
tricity, or after a powerful tragedy, and the chil- 
dren’s talk struck him as no more hopeless, help- 
less, and flippant than the complacent chatter of 
grown people about things they do not grasp. He 
knew too the bravado of his boys, and that the 
very ones who had spoken might be the first to 
come to him with thoughtful questions. Some- 
thing would remain of his appeal to the humanity 
of the neglected souls. If his words were some- 
times above them, what then? Should babies 
hear baby-talk exclusively, they would never learn 
the language of mature men. 

“ A topsy - turvy speech — a revolutionary 
speech ! ” said the major, but he did not look very 
stern. 

The Norm anus waited at the door for Franzl, 
who did not come. 

Arno went back for him. 

The janitor was putting out the lights. 

Franzl stood alone in the dim room, his brown 


A BATTLE AND A BOY.- 


285 


package under Iris arm. He had forgotten to fol- 
low his friends, for his thoughts were leading him 
in zigzag lightning journeys, from land to land, 
from age to age, and frowning in his earnestness, 
his lips compressed and resolute, he was trying to 
decide whether he would be a Galileo, an Edison, 
a Raphael, a Christopher Columbus, or a Schiller. 


END. 




















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